The Art of Leaving
by ice-9
Summary: AU Spashley.
1. Chapter 1

I don't own South of Nowhere. Read and review and all that shit, and don't get offended or sue me.

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They were talking about the Trip again. Crawling across Europe, rich and high and tools of an otherwise fleeting sense of liberty. The thought itself was intoxicating, so when they talked about the Trip their was a daze about their words, clouds in their eyes.

"And before I leave, I'll shoot that asshole, David," Ashley said, leaning back in her lawn chair, which quietly sunk into the dewy grass. In the backyard during the September party, they were now oblivious to both the stars and the noise of teenagers.

"We can meet the Dalai Lama," Aiden suggested, because he figured through some fashion or another they'd end up even farther east.

"Epic," Ashley breathed.

"And become socialists. Like Staples and his crew," he said. "And we _could_ shoot a person, you know?--if we want."

"Oh?"

"Yes. So we'll buy lots of guns, too."

Ashley closed her eyes, letting a drunken smile spread easily across her face. She forgot about Aiden and she forgot about dreaming, because she could only dream so often, and remembered the sounds of things breaking, and sirens bellowing in the distance.

She waited a few long seconds before roosting herself from her calm, shifting a little to indicate the change.

"What time is it?"

"About three."

"We should clear out that damn house."

Aiden put a joint out on the metal armrest and stood, stretching.

"Why don't you give me a minute?" he asked. "Look at that piece of ass over there. Blonde like I like it, fucking tight as a bitch, I bet. See, just give me a minute. You can get everyone else out if you want and we'll stay upstairs."

The piece of ass had acknowledged his attention and was approaching. Ashley rolled her eyes,

generally uninterested. Her sex drive had been satisfied and eventually extinguished with time, and she needed to pass out before school started in the morning–the first day of school, in fact.

"Take your fucking minute, you dick," she offered. "Just come down and help when you're done, and don't knock her up."

He seemed to agree with this, and went on to court the girl arrogantly and without shame.

Ashley walked up the slope and onto the porch, through bodies and up stairs, proclaiming all the way that cops grew near. The air became urgent and the people present clearly knew how to book it, because the big, pretty house was emptied pretty thoroughly in about ten minutes.

She grabbed what remained of the Jack Daniels, which was clearly her drink, and slid down against the doorway to the living room. The place was an abyss to her: sloppily shotgunned beer cans and cigarette butts littering the floor, a bra hanging off the couch, and a haze akin to that of a pool hall frequented by bikers. The cops weren't coming, but they should have.

She didn't often throw reckless, spontaneous parties in her own home, but Aiden had insisted on the counts that her mother was out of town until Monday night and it was the final day of summer, and every day had to be more fucked up than the last, apparently.

Ashley and Aiden were best friends by eighth grade, slept together freshman year, and in due time became reacquainted with one another and began mobbing parties together regularly. They were like partners in crime, and had absolutely no respect for each other, or really anyone.

The following morning would kick off their senior year, and when Ashley turned eighteen in February they'd get ready to up and leave in the summer, take the Trip and maybe stay on it, or so they figured. She'd receive the inheritance from her father that birthday, a sum so impressive that the companions maintained little doubt about the financial security of their coming endeavor.

She looked up from her slouched position on the floor, tired and very unwilling to address the mess before her when Aiden descended the staircase an hour later. He looked all at once exhausted and thoroughly pleased with himself, and somewhat naked, too.

"Go put on some clothes, you faggot," Ashley said. "And where's that girl? If she didn't notice your tiny dick when she was drunk she will when she's sober."

Aiden covered his boxers defensively.

"Tiny?! Pff. No, no, nothing of the sort. In fact, humongous–gargantuan proportions. She's passed out in your bedroom from the power."

"Wash those sheets," Ashley said. "And I mean, really now, why don't you wear pants? What's the appeal?"

"I just have nice legs, and I want you to see and admire them. It's all about making you hot, Ash."

"That's a very noble cause. Did you see the honey I screwed tonight? Oh, she did me in, I'm serious."

"It was kind of like being at a candy store," Aiden pondered. "Like, I would have fucked every chick here tonight."

"And there was lots of beer," Ashley said appreciatively. "It was a good thing."

Aiden plugged the stereo in by them, slipped in a CD and fiddled with the tracks curiously. The beats were hard, ceaseless rock, and the voice smoked too many cigarettes and yelled too loud. It was very beautiful, and classic. Content with a selection, Aiden placed himself beside Ashley.

"Raife Davies: the bastard son of fucking rock n' roll," he declared.

"You use me."

"I love to listen, Ashley, I do," he said. "And this is the way to kill a night, and you know it, and you love it and doesn't it make you a little happy, or nostalgic?"

"It makes me fucking nauseous."

"You love it."

"He could have showed up a little more."

Aiden patted her on the head and laid down, every action implying how wasted he was.

"He loved you, right? Don't worry about it. Go to sleep, we'll call some maids, fucking voila—hungover _without_ responsibility." he said. "And we can mob the Beemer and catch some cheap cappuccino on the way."

They both liked this idea, and they thought of it fondly while they passed out against the wall of the living room. Later Ashley thought of her dad, and walking to the bus stop with him, and Aiden thought of having sex with girls with blonde hair and pretty eyes and young breasts.

It was a happy evening and they would remember what mattered and probably who they kissed, then they'd wake up on time in the morning and remember to call the maids and grab their keys and for God's sake, their bookbags, and school would give them mad props.

Instead, Ashley found herself kicking her friend awake at ten with her mom twelve hours away and closing the gap and no maids in sight.

Ashley was an angry driver and not a fan of the sun post-party nights. They did, in fact, mob the Beemer, but it was a resentful mob, and Ashley almost crashed into a lot of things. There was no cheap cappuccino. Such a thing never existed, save for the occasional ghetto LA gas station--which wasn't on the way.

Arriving at school there were, predictably enough, absolutely no parking spaces, and they had to walk about half a mile up to the entrance. The place looked institutional, towering above them with thick brick walls and masses of children moving across the ugly urban campus, but Aiden and Ashley, in the least, were not scared–King High, if anywhere, was completely unthreatening.

Ashley, personally, was not a fan of the educational system. She was localized as a whore and a lesbian, and even without the segregation this brought she felt little sympathy for the undereducated people she would have to talk to had the situation allowed it. She, of course, in the middle of L.A., was not the only out-of-the-closet homosexual, but she was certainly the loudest. She liked to fight, too, and the students noticed that, and enjoyed it.

She climbed three staircases and came in late for her science class, planted herself in the back row of an almost full classroom. She was next to the only other empty seat.

The teacher gave her the look, and Ashley was very ready to say something smart-alecky and uncalled for. She'd been considering it all morning.

"Ms. Davies, is this an excused absence?"

"Not in the least."

"You'll be talking to the principal today, then, I suppose, but I'm sure you know that. It's the first day of school, you should think to give yourself some leeway."

"You should teach a real class. What is this, anatomy? That's not even the problem, though, really, because then I couldn't take weight training. You're in a room full of teenagers with nothing better to do at eight in the morning and all you can do is stand up there and yell at me. Hop to it, now, show me some bones and shit."

"It's eleven, Ashley, and don't swear at me."

"Oh, come on, go ahead."

The teacher rolled her eyes, for the most part unfazed, and glanced down at her seating chart momentarily.

"Your seat's to the left, Ashley, the transfer student sits there."

"And where is she?"

"Late, and probably with an actual reason. These displays are ridiculous–go pass out the books, and don't goof off about it. See me after class."

Ashley was very compliant and quiet, at this point busying herself with checking out the condition of her female classmates, some of whom were moderately attractive. She didn't think she could bed all of them, but she figured she could try.

She did, in fact, see the teacher after class, and she was chastised and given detention, which she would _maybe_ attend, if she wasn't still hung over. She got a pass to the next class and still got another detention, because she'd finally woken up and had plenty left to say.

Aiden, at the other end of the hall, started off his day popular and friendly, skipping the first class altogether and smoking cigarettes and pot with some of the kids from the basketball team in the locker room. He started off most days like that, and didn't get around to fraternizing with Ashley until school had ended.

Aiden was tall and handsome, and girls flirted with him and felt his well-manicured hair at lunchtime. He fucked a lot of them, and he played a lot of basketball, which was like fucking for him, anyways: poetic and brutal and far away.

Ashley was intimidating and rude. They enjoyed each other's company, and both decided to show up at detention that afternoon, so they could enjoy each other's company there. For about an hour and a half they discussed hot girls and buying a thirty and an ounce, until they were shushed and eventually dismissed.

They mobbed the BMW, at last, and picked up Sean the dealer and Ashley's little sister Kyla near the art department, and the four drove to the house, passing around a fat firm blunt. Sean sold Ashley her ounce and Aiden bought a quarter and drove him to his car. The two sisters sat about the house, not anticipating any schedule in particular, besides the return of Aiden and eventually Christine, Ashley's mother.

Kyla was from distant lands, having moved when Raife Davies, her father, had died. Ashley's mother wasn't hers, but she was quick to escape her own when the opportunity came. It was pretty for her to think about freedom, even though now she had it and she mourned structure.

She adored LA because she adored everything, but she was no native and she often moped around and talked to her ex-boyfriends when she should have been going out. She went to her bedroom to do that around dinner time, but promptly returned, enraged.

"Ashley, there is a girl in my bed! A half-naked girl! In my bed!" Kyla said, dramatically upset, as she tended to be. "Do I need to call the police? What did you do last night? Did you throw a party? Oh, man, I knew I shouldn't have slept at Chelsea's. You threw a party, and someone slept with that girl and forgot her. Probably you. You probably slept with all my friends, afterwards."

"I _did_ throw a party."

Kyla gasped, very offended.

"And I slept with _one_ of your friends. Over the course of the last week, about three. But that was a girl Aiden picked up, and he said she passed out in _my_ room, not _yours_, so it's definitely not my fault. It's definitely his fault."

"That is not your room! That is my room!"

"Did you wake her up?" Ashley didn't really care much. The house seemed pretty clean when she walked in, thankfully enough, and people do tend to pass out places, sometimes here. It was a fact of life, and their own fault for being careless.

"No! It's a girl passed out in my _bed_room, Ashley, and your disgusting pretty boy messed with her and probably got fucking cooties on my sheets, and blanket, and maybe even my alarm clock so I will get a disease every time I sleep or wake up!"

"You're right, that's exactly what will happen," Ashley said. She ate a Kit Kat and lit up a square.

"Well! Go get rid of her," Kyla shouted. Most of the time she was shouting; she was a very excited person.

Ashley stood up and brushed off her hands, puffing the cigarette as she walked up to Kyla's bedroom and opened the door. Sure enough, there was a girl in the bed, somewhat clothed and hidden behind the disheveled sheets. She was awake, however, and was holding her head in her hands, looking almost frightened.

She turned to Ashley with big, blue eyes, and frowned.

"What _time_ is it?"

"About five p.m."

"On...Monday?"

"Yeah. Are you in school? Because most of the public schools started today, and," Ashley added a dramatic pause. "You know, the day's kind of over."

"That's not good," the girl asserted, her voice a little panicky, but mostly thoughtful.

Ashley nodded in agreement and tossed a pair of jeans that were draped over a chair at the guest.

"Get up and get out," she suggested, feeling a little less personable. She was hoping that the girl would have become frightened and run off.

Instead, for whatever reason, she was smiling now, tilting her head to the side a little.

"Thanks. I'll have my brother come pick me up, if that's okay," she said. "Did you have a good time last night?"

Ashley eyed her suspiciously, wondering whether she should have bitched her out more seriously, as the reaction didn't sound very urgent or terrified.

"It was my fucking party, you bet I fucking did. And I bet that little boy toy friend of mine rocked your world, and you just loved all that loving."

The girl was frowning again, clothing herself, and Ashley became incredibly sour at her and Kyla and Aiden and everyone for having to look at her. She didn't even feel like hitting on her, even though there were quite a few openings and she was rather pretty. She slammed the door and returned to her spot in the living room in a very bad mood.

"Cunt is getting picked up."

"Cunt? Her name is Cunt? You slept with a girl named Cunt in my bedroom, Ashley? What does that say, Ashley? Cunt!" Kyla was exasperated. She turned on the tunes and began to pack a bowl with Ashley's weed, as was forthcoming for the situation.

"No, Kyla, Aiden slept with Cunt. I would never sleep with Cunt."

"Then don't."

"I won't. Her name is Cunt."

Cunt entered the room, looking a little nervous and upset. Kyla gave her a very dirty look, and so did Ashley, but the door was right there and she figured it out.

Ten minutes later Ashley felt obligated to bring out some of the trash bags that the maids had accumulated from the previous night, and she walked outside and past the girl, who was sitting expectantly on the stoop.

"My name is Spencer," Cunt said, smiling again, just a little. "Not what you were calling me inside. And I had a good time, too, with or without Aiden. Usually I don't go to those things, but my brother made me, because I'd be starting a new school this year, and I actually enjoyed it this time, in spite of all the chaos. It was kind of wonderful."

Her voice was high and sweet, somehow innocent independent of the sex. Ashley wanted to spit on her, she despised it so.

"You're not invited to anymore of my parties," Ashley said. "I don't like stupid wasted people who don't leave in the morning and let themselves be booty calls."

Ashley had her back turned to Spencer. She should have been turning the knob, opening the door and leaving her to the summer night chill, but she wanted to see her respond to that. Not, specifically, to say any particular thing, so much as to respond at all.

"You're right," Spencer said. "I don't really like drinking too much, being a booty call, or staying places I don't know. But I liked the other things, and meeting people. I'll be careful, though, and, you know, I'm fine."

"Fuck off."

A pick-up truck pulled up.

"Goodbye."

Ashley was still facing the door. The truck door opened and the driver sped off. She stared at the wood, slightly chipped and weathered, and drew her thumb across the metal of the doorknob thoughtfully. When she could no longer hear the clanging grunt of the car's motor, she went back into her house and thought about the Trip, which she usually did when she was wanting to think. Aiden came back and she watched Kyla yell at him, then the three smoked themselves to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Review if you like. I still do not own this show.

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Glen loved to party. He loved beer, cocaine, and inebriated girls, and he loved them when they were all together. The party in the mansion was a really good example of the success of this kind of collaboration. Ultimately, he was a very pleased man to have crashed this particular place this particular night.

"Glen, I don't know _anyone_ here. _You _don't know anyone here. I don't even know where we are! I don't even know how I'm getting home," his little sister whined. Her voice had cut into his reverie, and he was pissed and drunk.

"Take this and shut up," he said, handing her a water bottle full of vodka. "See that big guy over there? He's flirting with you from afar. Go talk to him until you pass out."

The two siblings had moved two weeks ago and had appeared at Ashley's house through some very convenient coincidences. Even Glen, expertly social in a manipulative sort of way, had not made enough friends to get him into that many good locations in LA. The next day they'd be touring a large local public school, and the day after that they'd be attending classes with thousands more people they didn't know.

Glen's little sister's name was Spencer. She was cute and nice and a little bit religious, and did not know how to drink at all. Consequently, it only took a few swigs from the bottle before she was eager to follow her brother's directions.

Aiden led her to a room on the second floor and pushed her against the wall and they kissed hungrily while she giggled and eventually fell onto the bed. Led Zeppelin played in the background, and she lost her virginity, many, many miles from Ohio, where she had grown up beautiful and kept it with such ease.

Waking up the next evening in a strange place, she wasn't quite sure how she felt about it. She was scared and hungover, as she was apt to be, and longed for familiarity. In addition, she had missed the tour and the meeting with the school, but in her years she had learned to take such things in stride, regardless of how big a deal her mother would make about it.

Glen was upset when he picked her up, violently whipping around the cheap cigar he was smoking. He wasn't much for taxiing, especially since they'd gotten to LA, and even without the weight of driving there and back he was angry at Spencer for having skipped out on the appointment.

"What were you thinking, not leaving when the cops came? What are you, five? Are you a hooker, were you up there banging that slutty guy?" Glen said. He seemed to be fuming a little from his ears.

Spencer ducked as the hand he was holding the cigar with flew in the direction of her head. She felt reasonably endangered, so she stayed quiet.

"Oh, yeah, and Mom's fucking pissed. She's going to cut your fucking head off. And Dad's like, 'It's okay, I'm sure she just got caught up at a friend's house, and she's probably already been to the confessional.' Well, you haven't. I think a juggalo lives there or some shit. You haven't been to any confessional at all."

Spencer's head throbbed under Glen's speech, recovering poorly from the alcohol. The air was very stale, and there was a cloud of pollution around the city. Ohio never quite smelled like the pits of Los Angeles through which they drove then.

It felt the same the following morning, when the pick-up truck hummed its way to school. She sat in the passenger seat and Glen smoked another cigar. In the backseat sat Clay, the youngest of the family by a few months. He was black, an adopted child, and glum-looking.

"Where were you yesterday?"

"Glen abandoned me at that party because he thought the cops were coming," Spencer said.

"Oh," Clay said. He looked very visibly glum today, but everyone else did too; that was just the kind of day it was. Glen puffed away at the cigar and ran ahead of them in the parking lot. He was trying to make some friends.

During her science class, Spencer met Ashley Davies. She sat next to her in the back, flashed her a tired smile, and received only a distinct scowl.

"I didn't know you went to the same school as me," she said. "Does Aiden go here, too? And that other girl?"

"Shut up, I'm trying to listen," Ashley told her. The teacher started laughing.

In the halls, Aiden found her and caught her mid-walk, giving her a long, hard stare. He put his hands on her shoulders, grinning down at her, and guided her towards the courtyard.

"Come have a smoke with me. Spencer, right?" he asked. "The other night was pretty tight, right?"

"Um."

"You're beautiful. Sometimes when I get drunk I'll fuck anyone, but I'm glad I fucked someone beautiful," he said, all charming and endearing. It really was the best he could come up with. He passed her a cigarette and she puffed it, coughed a little. It looked wonderful to him--so pure.

"Here, don't worry about it, don't worry about it. Have you made any friends yet?" Aiden asked. Several girls walked by, giggling, and he winked at them. They giggled harder.

"Well, I have a class with Ashley," she said. "She doesn't like me much."

"She doesn't like anyone much. She's my best friend, though," he said. "She'll warm up to you, if you spend time around her. I mean if you spend time around me, you'll spend time around her. If you want to. You know, spend time around us."

He sounded like a fifth grade boy. Spencer preferred the stuttering to when he breathed nicotine-scented air in her face, and when he smirked, as if he expected her to fuck him again immediately.

"I'd love to. Can I sit with you at lunch?"

"You can sit with Ashley. I have to sit with the basketball team." It was true, if he didn't sit with the basketball team, they'd get lost. They wouldn't know what to do with themselves, and they might end up just pacing in circles.

Spencer found Ashley in the back of the cafeteria, reading Erich Fromm. The girl appeared to be absorbed and distant, but when she sat down beside her the response was prompt.

"Yes?" Ashley said. Then she glared, as if she were looking at Hell, and Hell was Spencer and Spencer was Hell, and she was looking at it.

"Aiden said I should sit with you," Spencer tried. "I've read that."

"What? So you can read, write _and_ talk? Sucks for your family, I suppose," Ashley said. Spencer stared at her for a second.

"Do you usually read philosophy at lunch? It's a little loud."

"I'll read philosophy in your fucking mother's bedroom, bitch," Ashley said, then sat back proudly in her seat, feeling clever.

Spencer paused to laugh, and Ashley slammed her book down, upset.

"That was a good comeback. You're full of shit," she said, pointing accusingly across the table.

"Have you ever used it before?"

"All the fucking time," Ashley said. Here eyes were narrow and predatory. "And I bet you've never had a good comeback in your life. I bet you go around all day saying inane things to all the people who insult you, as they completely have the right to, and before you moved to LA everyone thought you were schizophrenic."

"Schizophrenic?"

"Yes. Completely, very schizophrenic. Inhumanly schizophrenic."

"No, no one thought that. Do you? I mean, I don't think any of the things I've said really indicate that I have schizophrenia."

"Trust me, I _know_ schizophrenia," Ashley said. She looked very serious.

"You know schizophrenia...personally?"

"_Yes_."

Clay inched over to the two and sat down beside Spencer hesitantly. He looked shy, and still rather glum.

"No, no, no, I'm sick of this and I'm moving," Ashley said, but mostly she just sat there. They were in the only remotely empty area in the room.

"This is Clay. He's my brother," Spencer explained. Clay waved under the table.

"No, he's not, because he's black and you're white, and you are just constantly full of shit, and a compulsive liar," Ashley explained. Some of this statement was in fact true, because Clay was still black and Spencer was still white.

"I was adopted," Clay said. Ashley ignored him; she was already over it.

"Clay, this is Ashley. We're not friends," Spencer said.

"Don't introduce me to your family. Don't even pretend you know my name–you don't."

"We're not even acquaintances, and I _don't_ know her name," Spencer said, then smiled a little. "But it's Davies, isn't it? Ashley Davies? Your dad was in that band--Purple Venom. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

Clay nodded, even though he didn't really know that band at all. He had just heard of them. Actually, he preferred classical. He played a mean piano.

"Are you stalking me?"

"I suppose--but I like that music. I like that band," Spencer said.

"Are you sure you're not thinking of Britney Spears? Because they're different people. My dad wasn't Britney Spears."

"No, no, I'm not thinking of Britney Spears. I like the band your father was in."

The bell rang. Ashley hurried over to Aiden, away from the siblings, in a frenzied attempt to compel him to skip class with her. She was thoroughly exasperated with the entire thing.

"Why did you sic that bitch on me?" she asked, because he was, as it turned out, willing to skip. It didn't require much thought.

"Um, hm," he said. "Shelby?" He was just guessing. He wasn't sure which bitch he'd sicced on her.

"No. Cunt," Ashley said. She didn't want to say the name; she was afraid it'd jinx it and she'd have to talk to her again.

"Oh. You mean, oh, Spencer? She's sweet, isn't she?" Aiden said. "I didn't remember her being that pretty when we were drunk."

"Yes, yes, Cunt. And you've got it all wrong, she's a beast, that one. Very diseased," Ashley explained. "What's that sound in your voice, though, what are you getting at?" She looked at him suspiciously.

"No, I think she was a virgin, man. Hey, what about that thirty-pack? Let's go get it," Aiden said. "We'll get drunk, and shit."

He looked out into empty space, anticipating happily the drinking session the day foretold. Ashley was still very upset, making elaborate gestures to go with her words.

"Oh my God, Aiden. I know what you're doing, you're thinking about _dating_ again!" she gasped accordingly.

This interrupted his thought process, which before had been in no way aligned with hers.

"You know what, Ashley? I'm not thinking about dating again. In fact, I want a steady fucking girlfriend. I'm going to ask _Cunt_ out. I think she's beautiful, and she's the nicest girl in the fucking world and you're all harassing her like she gave you Herpes or something," he said. "And it's none of your fucking business whether I date or not. And she has nice tits, and I won't have to worry about who I'm banging or when and I can just be happy for a bit, before we leave, you know? I mean, fucking chill out. Shit doesn't always have to be so damn, I don't know, hard."

He walked away dramatically, like he was an eighth grade girl blowing off her bff for the sixteenth time that year. It was a very grim scene for Ashley, but they met again at the liquor store and did absolutely nothing in the way of reconciliation. Instead, they faked forgetting, and they laughed together as they drank.

In the Carlin home, Spencer told Glen about her day.

"Sounds like a bitch to me," he said. "She's a rich bitch, though, with a daddy like that. And that was her house you stayed at, wasn't it? Jesus. Make friends with her, Spence."

"Raife Davies is dead, Glen."

"Yeah," agreed Clay, even though he didn't really know, and all of his favorite artists were dead.

Then, Spencer told her dad about her day. She left out the part about the cigarette, and about having passed out at Ashley's house two nights ago.

"It's certainly a start, Spencer. I'm sure she'll figure it out," he said. "And she sounds like a pretty interesting character, too--as long as she's not the exact same as all of Glen's friends, I think you're fine."

Arthur was very tall and smiled many big, wide smiles. He was a social worker, and he loved to hear about how Spencer was doing. He was wise, too, because Glen's friends were very typical and uninteresting.

Spencer did not tell her mother about her day, because her mother was at work at the hospital. She imagined she was getting laid at the hospital, too, and she and Clay conjectured about it after dinner as they watched television. When she'd finished her homework and chores she shut herself in her room and remembered Ohio, and what Deborah would say, or maybe her ex-boyfriend. They were pleasant thoughts. She dreamt about small towns.


	3. Chapter 3

Voila. Review?

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After a few weeks, Aiden began dragging Spencer around everywhere he went. He gave her lots of alcohol, pot, and cigarettes, and made a lot of attempts to sneakily corrupt her. Most of the time, she just looked kind of exhausted, but sometimes he would come up with a crazy, impossible scheme and she'd go along with it by accident.

"Let's take a bunch of ecstasy and mushrooms and go to an amusement park," Aiden said. "Then we can break some shit."

"Fine." Spencer yawned, apparently not listening. It was two in the morning on a Tuesday, because he had insisted the "gang," which was a very new term, had to get together and, per se, party. Instead of partying, however, they were sitting around smoking lots of marijuana in Ashley's bedroom and being rude to one another.

Ashley had made a habit of always looking pissed, and was giving everyone mean looks. Right now she was giving Kyla a mean look, because Kyla loved Spencer and was being rather friendly. Ashley decidedly disliked her and wanted everyone to be unfriendly to her.

"Stop trying to, I don't know, defile her, Aiden," Kyla said. "It makes you look girlier."

"Shut up, Kyla," Ashley said. "Aiden knows he's girly, and that slut is a slut." She furrowed her brow aggressively.

Sean was selling drugs to Glen in the back of the house. Glen often showed up to buy drugs from Sean. Suddenly, his sister was the hook-up, and she didn't even care.

Around that time, Glen had also begun fucking the same girl twice. He was very obvious about it, and he brought her to his two a.m. Tuesday drug deals. This was because she had humongous breasts, and he hated Aiden and wanted to rub it in his face.

When he walked out with her, he stood a little behind her so he could make signals at her chest and flip Aiden off. He did it every single time. Everyone rolled their eyes simultaneously.

By some strange workings, they actually did go to an amusement park, stretches of land away from the city. The place, predictably, was closed, and the Ferris wheel kind of rocked under the warm California winds. Although they planned to do something interesting roughly every night, they rarely did anything besides go to parties and throw them and smoke too much weed. Spencer thought the silence was beautiful, shared a rare appreciation for the moon.

No one was on ecstasy or shrooms or both. They _did_ bring a keg, though.

Glen and his girlfriend, a vicious Hispanic named Madison, immediately retreated to the other side of the park to have sex. Aiden and Sean wanted to break things, so they drank some and got to doing so excitedly, as if violence were second nature. It might have been.

Kyla, Ashley and Spencer lined up beside a booth, at first pacing, eventually planting themselves against the wall. The boyish yelps faded into the distance and the setting was calm and easy for the quiet contemplation of which they were typically deprived–among the LA traffic, there were no lonely moments.

Kyla thought about Raife Davies, whom she had never consciously met. She recalled Baltimore, and going to theme parks with her stepfather. He had hugged her and loved her and talked to her when she had trivial issues with friends and men. She didn't like him much, she thought.

Spencer remembered that first night with Aiden, and crossing the backyard into the house with him while the people drained around them. They held hands. She had been apprehensive, forgotten about the cute flings she had once worried over. It bothered her a lot, because most of all she hadn't really felt anything. Lust was dry, painless--she had done it, and slept, and felt a little bit sick, and she hadn't thought much of anything at all.

Ashley was considering the Trip. She usually did. There were a lot of details to it. She thought maybe she just wouldn't take Aiden, because he was being such a pussy and all.

After a few minutes they spread themselves across the pavement, ignored the feeling of cold concrete against skin. It was pretty to look up right then. They were surrounded by nothing.

"Do you think we should take a bus through the United States and to Mexico, or go to Europe first? I mean, we'll do both. But I don't know which one would be more efficient to start with," Ashley said. It wasn't an interruption, really. They could still hear the wind.

"What is the Trip?" Spencer asked. Kyla wasn't listening any longer.

"The day we kill you--we're going to run you over and abandon the car in the fucking ocean and just laugh the hours away. _Hours_," Ashley said, almost impulsively.

Spencer didn't say anything.

"When I get my half of the inheritance on my birthday, we're going to leave Los Angeles. For a long time. We're going to go everywhere, and we're going to learn about freedom," Ashley said. "It's a little bit complex, though. It has to be pretty thorough, but we'll have a few rounds."

"Who's 'we?'" Spencer asked.

There was a pause, a considerable one, maybe three minutes of emptiness.

"I don't know."

"Aiden and you are going to get _married_ and Ashley is going to go on her adventure and meet some French girls and have a very successful polygamous union and I'm going to live with Christine, or something. Oh my God," said Kyla in a characteristically loud outburst. "We're seniors! Our lives are over."

"Your life is over. I mean, especially if you stay with Christine. I mean, what?" Ashley said. "But my life isn't over. My life hasn't even started. I'm waiting. I can't start yet."

Spencer was concentrating.

"The summer before my junior year, I used to think about going away, perhaps to med school, something like that," she said. "And I thought maybe this move was a little bit like going away, because up until it actually happened I was still thinking about it. But, I mean, I went away. I miss Deb, and Paulie, and walking down a suburban sidewalk with my dog. I'd love to do that now. But it's all the same if I think about leaving here, so most of the time I think about it more as going somewhere else and staying there."

Ashley was staring at Spencer in the dark. Her expression was, for once, not representing thousands of things. She was just curious.

A lot of shit was broken at the park before they went home. It was a soundless, sleepy return. No one went to school the next day. On Friday, Aiden made sneaky plans to bring Spencer to a rave, and the "gang" showed up, because it was a rave, and they were teenagers in Los Angeles.

He waited with Ashley beside a box of glow sticks, in a spacious warehouse that was gradually filling.

"Why don't you talk anymore?" he asked, kind of sarcastic, kind of genuinely interested.

"I'm drunk," Ashley said. "I forgot English." She wasn't drunk at all, and it was obvious, and she didn't forget English, because she was speaking it. The main issue was that she didn't know why she wasn't talking. For the most part, she had just been thinking a lot, and she couldn't think and hold useless conversations at the same time. Consequently, she had been avoiding them, and not very practically.

"I have _news_," he offered.

"I bet it'll piss me off."

"Oh, no, definitely," Aiden said. "Just, guess. Come on, guess."

"This is pissing me off," she said. She prepared to walk to the other corner, to think and such.

"Man, you need to get laid."

"What's your news?"

"I'm asking Spencer out, and she's going to say yes, and the team's gonna be like, 'Yeah!' and I'm going to punch her dick brother in the face," he said, very serious. "She's so cute, Ashley, you just don't get it. She's like, the peaceful stranger with a heart."

Ashley was struggling with his analogy and pissed off in general at his news. She went to the other corner, to think and such. Aiden shrugged it all off, bought five Blue Doves laced with acid from Sean. He was very ready to get fucked up.

A small crowd developed and Spencer crept through the door, Clay and Kyla in tow. Clay was her ride, because Glen wanted to go to the club and see Madison dance like a whore, and Kyla and she had begun a very functional relationship in which they were both constantly distraught about people who made them hang out with them. They spent lots of time together.

Clay was glum that night. He didn't want to be there--really, he didn't.

Aiden raced over to Spencer. He stood like a shy giant, his hands tucked into his pockets awkwardly and his wife beater hanging loosely over his body.

Clay approached Sean. They wanted to talk about politics, as both were very active members of the Los Angeles black community. Clay had been accepted into first-tier schools, and Sean was a relatively large-scale entrepreneur of sorts.

Kyla left them alone, but she did it very deliberately. It was because Aiden disgusted her.

"Have you been having fun?" Aiden asked. Then he grimaced, like he'd just been shot in the crotch. He wanted to say something really cool and sexy, but he hadn't really thought of anything cool and sexy. It frustrated him.

"Here?" Spencer asked.

"No, no, I mean, just like, chilling. You know. All that."

"All the...chilling?"

"Yeah, yeah, the chilling. Good stuff."

"Oh, yeah. Chilling. Definitely," Spencer said, nodding furiously. She generally preferred normal discussions to awkward ones, so she felt a bit uncomfortable.

"Listen, listen, Prom's coming up, right?" Aiden asked, as if he'd forgotten.

"Oh, yeah. Prom. I wonder where you're taking this," she said. Realistically, she kind of knew where he was taking it.

"Are you, say, going with anyone yet?" Aiden asked. He started a pivot where he stood, rocking back and forth on his heels, brimming with nervous energy.

"No, no. Do you want to go with me?"

"Yes!"

"All right, all right. What are you on?" Spencer asked.

"Ecstasy!" Aiden said--then he winked, like he was in an advertisement. "But I mean, that's got nothing to do with it. It hasn't even kicked in yet, you know? It's just, I know we've fucked before, but, Spencer, damn it, I like hanging out with you. Being with you, all that shit. We don't even need to fuck again if you want to take it slow, or whatever, but, go out with me." Pause. "Please, go out with me."

Spencer searched the room carefully, saw Kyla hitting on the DJ, Clay yelling something circular to Sean. In the shadows of the farthest corner, she could see Ashley messing with a girl. They were ravenous about it.

"Sure."

Aiden hadn't technically considered what would happen if she _did_ want to "take it slow," but he was glad she hadn't mentioned it. He wiped sweat from his brow, eased slowly away from the scene. Ultimately, the entire thing had left him feeling similar to a character from a B-rated 80's film. No one ever wanted the rave to turn out like a B-rated 80's film, as they often tended to do.

"Do you want one of these?" he asked, holding out his palm in mid-step. "They'll make you feel good."

"No, don't worry about it."

"What do you want to drink?"

Nothing, Spencer thought. But what she said was Bud Light.

He disappeared into a body of people, and Spencer remembered cigarettes, and what she'd learned about them since she got to King High. She sought Kyla and bummed one, headed for the back doors to smoke it and stare into space.

Ashley followed her a minute later, in a swearing mess. She saw Spencer and swore at her, pushed the door open farther to reveal the girl she had been necking passed out in her arms.

"It's fucking seven o'clock in the fucking evening. What fucking bitch passes out at seven o'clock? Is this your fault, you fucking bitch? I bet you were about to pass out," Ashley said. She glared pointedly.

"I'm going out with Aiden," Spencer said. She kept Ashley updated on most things, and usually enjoyed her responses, which were all rather irrelevant.

"You're a slut," Ashley said, but she meant it this time; it was very relevant.

"I know," Spencer replied. She sat down on the stoop with her cigarette, staring at the gravel.

"Give me that, you slut, right now," Ashley said. "You don't even know what you're doing. You smoke like a gay man."

"Maybe you just smoke like a lesbian."

"I am _not_ a lesbian. I'm just a person who has sex with women."

"I'm glad we could finally clarify."

"Your fucking problem is that you spend too much damn time around that wuss, and then you go to your first rave and people are passing out at seven. That's what your problem is. Oh, and you never get any ass whatsoever, even though you're a slut."

"Oh? How'd you know this was my first rave?"

"Everyone in the whole fucking world knows it's your first rave. What if I _didn't_ know it was your first rave?" Ashley proposed. "That'd be fucking strange, if I couldn't figure that out."

"I don't want to go out with Aiden," Spencer said. "I don't think."

Ashley sat down next to her, put on her nonchalant face.

"He's very handsome, right? And that used to matter to me. I used to want to be dating all the time, but I stopped caring somewhere. I don't know when."

"_Handsome_, seriously?"

"Seriously."

"He's pissing me off," Ashley said. "It used to be everyone pissed me off and he pissed me off a little less, but now he just pisses me off as much as everyone else. Maybe even more than Kyla."

"Do you think I should go out with him?

"Torture yourself," she said.

Spencer grinned.

"No, I think I will. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't," she said. "If I get drunk, do you think I'll end up having sex with him again?"

"Yes," Ashley said. "Unprotected, nasty sex."

"I don't want to do that."

"Come here," Ashley said, in the least sexually inviting way she could manage. The result was monotone and otherworldly, and eventually awkward because then she had to do something with the passed out girl. At some point she led Spencer to where Sean and Clay were debating, and bought her two rolls.

"Go rave," she told her. Spencer swallowed them and became submerged in what had at last become a mass of people.


	4. Chapter 4

Here is the fourth chapter, after a while. Read and review. I don't own SON.

* * *

Spencer was staring at the floor, her pupils wide and her mind far from the music that boomed beyond her. She was very awake, and very happy, but very scared.

Ashley was also rolling, but she wasn't nearly as calm. Instead, she was complaining. First she was complaining about not having been able to finish with the girl, then she was complaining about Aiden, and having to be around him, and mostly she was complaining about having to take care of Spencer, who at some point or another had decided she feared both solitude and large crowds and had attached herself to Ashley's arm.

Spencer ran her fingers across her hand as they sat in the back with a few beers--she was so _happy_.

"Stop that," Ashley asserted. "Stop touching me."

"Wait, so do you think I'll still have to have sex with Aiden?"

"I'd say you're screwed once you've done it once. Stop touching me."

"I guess I wouldn't mind, really. But it just feels so _empty_."

"I don't like to be touched," Ashley said. That wasn't true; she had plenty of intercourse, which tended to involve touching, and she liked that.

"Then why do you have so much sex?" Spencer asked appropriately. She held Ashley's hand up in front of her eyes, examined it as if it were Jesus Christ's hand, vivid and calloused and divine under the strobe lights and the noise.

"Because it feels nice," Ashley said, pausing for a moment. "And because I can."

"Do you think I could have sex all the time?" Spencer asked. "Maybe I will."

"No, no, no," Ashley said. "It takes me away, I suppose."

"Do you think you'll have sex with lots of people when you leave?"

"Lots of sex," Ashley said.

"That doesn't make sense to me. If you go somewhere else to escape and then do something to escape from being there, then you're never going to be satisfied. And it'd just remind you of when you tried to get away from here while you were here."

"You had sex with _Aiden_, you slut."

"Sex didn't take me away. Neither does smoking, or drinking. I guess this does, but in the end everything just makes me think more about where I am," Spencer said, suddenly very serious. "But I do love you guys. I love you."

She stood up, releasing Ashley's hand, letting vertigo take hold of her body as she paced a few steps.

"I despise you," Ashley said. It was a very un-ecstasy-like thing to say.

"No, you love me too. You're sitting here with me when you could be dancing, aren't you? Come here, come dance with me."

Spencer pulled her from her seat below, dragging her into a reluctant embrace and out towards the wriggling, breathing floor. It was the closest the two girls had ever been; they had never hugged.

After a few seconds Ashley found her hands on Spencer's waist and felt her body against hers. She glanced around suspiciously, trying to find someone she knew, and when she didn't she decided against resistance. She wrapped herself around the other girl and danced with soul, for hours, smiled a tiny smile against Spencer's skin. They blended together for a bit, among the other people and the persistent sounds.

Aiden had been passed out for a while when they finished dancing, and when he got up and found Spencer he acted as if he had been with her the entire time, saying things a boyfriend would say. He even found Clay and asked humble permission to take her home, and Clay was tired and completely wrote it off.

"Did you have a good time?" Aiden would ask. Then he would offer her some water, kiss her nose kind of tenderly. She sat shotgun and ignored him the entire time. She didn't say a word and stared out into the road, and the nighttime.

Kyla and Ashley retreated to the third floor while everyone else slept below them. They sparked a bowl and Ashley listened as her sister reminisced about her night, but she said little. While Kyla droned on she snorted a line of coke, felt solace in the familiar rush.

"So who were you dancing with tonight?" Kyla asked loudly, once she had exhausted her conversation with herself. "You guys were pretty into it, dancing and stuff. And chilling out, and dancing."

"I don't want to talk about it," she said. She locked eyes with the air and the wall, felt good for a minute or two.

"You were dancing with _Spencer_, you dirty liar. You want to fuck Spencer."

"I don't want Aiden's sloppy seconds," Ashley said, somewhat robbed of a passionate response.

"Why are you so mean to her if you want to fuck her so bad? It doesn't make sense to me."

"I don't want to _fuck_ her. I don't even want to be near her," she said. "And she's not really pretty, you know? She's like, twelve, or something."

Kyla bounced a little on a bed and rolled her eyes. She snorted a line, too, and laid down beside Ashley. The two stared at the ceiling, now, and where Kyla remembered being young and pleased, Ashley remembered being at the amusement park earlier that week.

"Sometimes she'll say these things," Ashley started, but that was all she said. She didn't want to be prompted, but she kind of left herself open to it.

"Yeah?"

"And I'll just be like, 'Who says that? No one says that.'"

"And..."

"And it's different."

"Yes?'

"And so she'll just say certain things that no one says. And Aiden's always drooling over her, but why? It's not because of anything much. He just wants a consistent piece of ass. I mean, he knows she's different too, but he doesn't get it. He has it all wrong."

"Oh?"

"And she's too innocent. She does all these things with us, but they don't even touch her. She just sits there and grins like an idiot while she's surrounded by chaos, as if she's the little fucking light of God. It's just not right."

"The light of God?"

"Yes. The light of God. She's Catholic."

"Really? I didn't notice that."

"No, she is Catholic. Sometimes I'm talking to her, and I forget that I'm not Catholic."

"I don't think she grins very much," Kyla said, now giggling a high-pitched coke giggle.

"Well, she does, and you just don't notice, because she doesn't talk to you. She only talks to me. She's always talking to me instead of you. So there."

"So there what?"

"I don't know."

"Oh my God! You _do_ want to fuck her!"

"No, that's not it at all. I'm going to sleep," Ashley said. She got up and walked to the other side of the room, as if it would solve things.

"No you're not."

"Okay, well, I am going over here. So leave me alone."

Kyla didn't leave her alone at all. She never did, and this was no exception. Instead, she badgered her and mooched off her pot, and ended up talking about herself again.

On Monday, Ashley and Aiden skipped school, very secretively and unintentionally. They woke up hung over and made a mutual decision to go buy some beer and a fifth of vodka instead of going to class. They went to the beach and sat in the back of Aiden's truck, very drunk. Ashley looked skimpy and Aiden looked like a model--a gay model, in fact.

"So, Ashley, my dear friend, I noticed you haven't been getting very much, eh, ass, lately, eh?" Aiden said. Neither had he, technically, but he had what he thought to be a very charming excuse.

"I have been getting ass. That is a lie, that I have been devoid of ass. There is ass," Ashley said. "So much ass."

"You didn't get ass last night, or the night before. And your ass bailed on you the night before that. She was like, 'Ugh,' and she passed out, in the middle of your ass-getting."

"The picking has been slim," Ashley said, then added a Southern twang to her words. "Damn slim."

They both giggled for a bit. As the day progressed and people came and went, several girls sat along the shoreline and Aiden directed his friend's attention to their presence.

"I will take one of their asses," said Ashley.

"Who, them? They're not gay."

"How do you know?"

"Because I want them all. And girls are never gay."

"Oh, we'll see about that, Aiden Dennison," she said. "I will _gayify_ them."

The two companions sauntered over to the scene at which the girls were laid out beneath the sunlight, and both flirted horrendously until somehow they all ended up back at Ashley's house. Aiden was on top of one of them, soon, kissing down her body eagerly.

Ashley had two girls, and it reminded her of the summer and fucking every night. She felt different, for some reason, less fascinated. She wanted to feel them more thoroughly and kiss them harder and forget about anything besides lips and eyes and bare skin, but instead she was thinking about Aiden cheating on Spencer, and she mentioned it.

"That's not your girlfriend," Ashley said, half-heartedly, even though she was trying to say something solid and worthy.

"You have a girlfriend?"

"Um."

"Does he have a girlfriend?"

"Yes. He loves her," Ashley said, and laughed for a second. The thought was strange.

The girl let out an indignant grunt and slapped Aiden across the face before storming confusedly out of the house. Ashley would remember it for years, giggle over it fondly whenever it came up.

When one of the girls she was busy with began to glance over at the dejected boy smoking a cigarette idly in the corner, she waved her off carelessly, not mourning her absence in the equation. Later that afternoon, when it returned to being Aiden and her sitting drunk together, she thought about straight girls.

"They _were _straight," she told Aiden, trying unsuccessfully to articulate what was going through her head.

"I guess that doesn't matter to you, you bitch, you," he said.

"And you cheated on her."

"Spencer?"

"Yes. Her."

"Well," he said. He was rather tired and wasted at this point, and didn't have much to say to that.

"Kyla's bringing her back here tonight, and you have to look at her, and worship her and things like you always do. And you cheated on her."

"Shh," he said. "I will be very good. But don't tell her."

Ashley realized that regardless of her opinion, she wasn't going to tell her. She had never told; she never would. They went downstairs and fell asleep, became limp bodies in Ashley's bed.

Spencer did go to school that day, and hit the strip with Kyla afterwards. She talked about cheerleading in Ohio, and going to Nationals once. They giggled about boys they saw walking down the sidewalks, and Spencer didn't say anything about Aiden. The subject tended to upset her, because he made her tired, and they were hanging out that night..

Once they had spent a sufficient amount of money on clothes, Spencer invited Kyla back to her house for dinner, and Arthur picked them up, chatting happily with his daughter and her friend. He was very curious about what they'd been doing all the time, albeit thoroughly pleased that Spencer had already developed relationships with people from her school. He didn't ask about Aiden, either, even though he had been hearing the name often from multiple sources. He was waiting for her to say something, maybe bring him home one day.

At home Glen was with Madison, because bringing her to dinner made it easier for their sex schedule. They had one, and Glen kept winking about it. Clay, sitting across from them, rolled his eyes, annoyed, and gazed rather absently at the food being laid out on the table.

Paula was a very domineering person. She was tall and pretty and a little bit stressed-looking, but her voice made it sound like she was on top of absolutely everything, and perhaps a few men, too. Incidentally, when she was with her family, she exercised this attitude to its fullest. She loved the appearance of power, loved _owning_ the place, especially she loved the idea of Spencer going to med school and doing whatever the hell Paula was doing at work. It just fit in.

"Oh, this is cute, Kyla," Paula said. "Gosh, you really are showing her how to dress. You'll have to bat them off with the stick."

"Them" meant boys--ones that went to Church, with fat wallets.

"Oh, we already have to do that without the clothes," Kyla said. It sounded like an appropriate thing to say, and very serious too. They were both a little high, but it flew right over Paula's head.

"Well, that's excellent. You know, Spencer, sweetie, Glen was telling me about a _boy_ from the _basketball_ team. That you two were _dating_."

"Oh, yeah," Spencer said. "Lots of dating."

"And what's his name?"

"Aiden."

"Is he handsome?"

"Mmhmm. He's very handsome," Spencer said. "And he's very religious." Aiden had a lot of faith in alcoholism. He'd said it once, and shared a good laugh with himself.

"Is he going to college?"

"Yes, lots of college."

"Oh," Paula said. She couldn't think of a way to follow up a response like that.

The doorbell rang, interrupting the quiet that had followed. About three people got up to get it, but in the end Arthur went with his wife to answer it.

Here Paula met Ashley, and they did not like each other.


	5. Chapter 5

Here is the fifth chapter, later than I anticipated. I hope you read and review, or whatever you want. I do not own SON.

* * *

Paula had always been able to tell when Glen was drunk or snooted, even when it was the middle of the afternoon and he was joining them in something ordinary and innocent, like watching Christian-approved television or anticipating Arthur's next choice in dinner. That was an issue when she was home, anyways. On his own, her husband could always tell, but he never said a word.

Paula _was_ home that night, looking out onto her doorstep where Ashley Davies leaned lethargically against the post.

"I have come to pick Kyla and your slutty daughter up," Ashley explained. "We're going, uh, fishing. And a slumber party."

Paula knew she was drunk, and cursed the fact in her head. Meanwhile all the creases along her face bent through the layers of make-up and she looked twenty years older, perhaps a foot taller, too, somehow. There was a drunk girl with angry eyes and a cocky grin on her doorstep, and she was completely morally opposed to the entire thing.

"You," she said, then she folded her arms and stood straight like a tower. "_You_ may not take one step inside this house."

"I don't need to. It smells like Jesus and hard liquor. I mean, I have Jesus and hard liquor at home already. Just send them out and we can have ourselves a good Jesus time at my place."

It wasn't that Ashley was scared, or anything, because in most normal situations that would have been her cue to invite herself in, but she was quite exhausted, and she was only there because Kyla had gone there with no fashion through which to return, and Aiden had passed out before he could facilitate their ride. He always picked Spencer up. But he was a sneakier drunk than she, and it showed. She didn't want to pick a fight with the woman, until, maybe, say, tomorrow. Or she could puke on her shoes, or something, and that would work things out. She was considering it when Paula was strategically removed from the entrance.

"It's fine, it's fine. Why don't we talk a second, sweetie?" Arthur said, trying to be extra-amiable to make up for how amiable they weren't being. "I'm sorry, Ashley, I'm Mr. Carlin. You can go inside, Spencer and Kyla are in the dining room. Right through there. See?" He pointed, grinned that big friendly grin.

Ashley wandered clumsily into the back of the house where the teenagers sat and chuckled nervously amongst themselves. Shortly after that Paula and Arthur started yelling rather viciously, and Glen and Madison went to have sex, and Clay went to play Brahms on the grand, echoing piano. It was an interesting moment, as the three remaining girls retreated instead to Spencer's bedroom, in which every corner of the house was loudly inhabited, decidedly beautiful under Ashley's drunken gaze.

They promptly got to puffing a bit, carefully blowing smoke through the open window. For Ashley it became like her youth, when she used to like to be cautious about things, when the third floor didn't reek of illicit things and she'd use pillow cases and cracks under the panes to funnel the polluted air.

Once they were sufficiently blazed a peaceful silence ensued, and Kyla quickly interrupted it, as she typically felt apt to do.

"Ash, roll a joint," she said, because it seemed about right for the situation.

"No, I'm wasted. You roll a joint."

"I'm wasted, too."

"No, you're not. Spencer, you roll a joint. You owe me a joint."

"Yes, Spencer, roll us...the joint."

"I can't roll a joint," Spencer said. "I don't know how."

Kyla wasn't wasted at all, and at this statement she started and went off on a spiel on the importance of the art of rolling and how badly they needed to smoke a joint right then. Lying back on the bed behind him, Ashley swung her head a bit, attempting to shake the nausea that came with too much hard drink, and sat up at last, taking a paper from a pack in her purse and holding it in front of Spencer.

"Put the weed on the crease," she said, holding it taut with her thumb and her forefingers. "No, it has to be fatter than that. You're just not very good at this at all. Put the weed in the fucking thing, and just leave it there. Stop that."

"And?"

"That's not fat enough. No, you should just start over or something, or go over there, and for God's sake, pick that up. I'm leaving."

Spencer put more weed in the joint, took it between her own two fingers, and Ashley didn't leave, instead helping her roll it tight and making rude comments consistently throughout the process. Their hands touched and Ashley thought they were soft, but she was repulsed--she slid over a few inches and watched Spencer lick the seal from the edge of the mattress, as if that would get her away from the source of her unease.

Having lit it, Spencer took the first hit, felt the rush leaving a weight behind her eyes and upon her shoulders and her lungs. Below the piano softened and the shouts ceased, and it was with her face clenched and the joint burning between her fingers that her father saw her as he walked in.

He was taken aback at first, stopping short of the carpet in her room and looking onto the scene with something that may have been anger had his features not been so relaxed, or if his stance hadn't seemed so _normal_, and unfazed. The rotation had halted impulsively and from the edge of the bed the three looked up at him, timid like it was middle school and they were half-way out the window going to see boys. Of course, for all of them but Spencer it was not an uncommon occurrence. Arthur had seen his children smoke, sensed the daze in their movements.

Consequently, he walked over to the center of the room and removed the joint from her hand. He hit it long, and hard, with a gait unfamiliar to their generation, and passed it to Kyla like some kind of hip parent with tattoos and a moped.

"I didn't think you chiefed, Mr. C," Ashley said, calmly, even though in the back of her mind she was five again and watching her father cut a line, and she wasn't feeling calm at all.

"Sorry," Spencer said. She had been planning on saying it when he took it from her, but the words had gotten misplaced once he'd actually partaken in the activity.

"Now, I don't want you kids smoking up this house. You can go over to Ashley's if you're home before it's late, and make sure you keep up on your school work. Senior year is still important," Arthur said, in about as authoritative a tone as his gentle voice could allow. He left them at this point, closing the door delicately behind him.

Kyla giggled a bit.

"He's like a hippy. I bet in his day he could roll a fat dooby, and today he was like, 'This J is weak,'" she said, adding a British accent to the quote and making Arthur sound much like Paul McCartney.

"Um," Spencer said.

"Okay, let's go. I bet you're pretty ashamed of your getting off all easy like that and having one less excuse to be such a pussy. I'm sure he's cool with you being a whore, too."

"Hold on, Ashley," Kyla said, and she pulled Spencer to her feet, patted her back and recounted to her fondly The Time with Her Stepdad freshman year where she smoked pot with him, and he inhaled strangely and extravagantly and got so _stoned_.

They walked to the car and Spencer began to speak again, and by the time they were there she had forgotten the scene among discussion of Aiden and Paula and things Ashley did when she was supposed to be in class. Ashley wasn't driving well, so she sat passenger and her sister took the wheel and they all rambled on for the length of the trip.

Upon entering the mansion Kyla excused herself to take an important call from her boyfriend from seventh grade, and the two ventured into the living room to find Aiden, sure enough, collapsed and only half-way on the couch. His left leg was resting on the pillows where his right hung lazily over the edge, and his arms covered his face haphazardly. He was snoring atrociously.

Spencer stood at the arch, observing her boyfriend's position, while Ashley grabbed her cigarettes from the table and lit one up on the other sofa. The television blinked on and the show was loud and funny, probably, but she was hearing Aiden snore and Ashley wasn't laughing.

Eventually they were sitting together, watching the characters on the set react casually to preposterous antics and doing so with empty eyes. Aiden moaned and his hand swung up from its place against his forehead and slapped the armrest.

"He's good like this, when he's passed out," Spencer said, at last, serious and smiling somewhat. "He's a good person."

"He really likes you," Ashley said, and she did so slowly and quietly. She had felt all of a sudden that it was especially important for her to defend him, or promote him, or believe in him for a second more than she usually did. It was gratifying, and as she sat back satisfied against the sofa, Spencer tilted her head and loved Ashley for having said _that_, and having been the one to say it, and for having stayed their beside her and glared into the depths of that useless screen for the rest of the evening.

At school the next day Ashley was feeling rather all right, and skipped down one of the barren hallways when she skipped second period. She found Aiden in one of the women's bathrooms, chatting it up with Glen and one of their basketball homies.

This basketball homie's name was Patrick. He was tall and didn't look like Aiden or Glen, but he was cuter than them, because he didn't stink of tobacco and he couldn't drink well without becoming obnoxious. He scratched his head shyly when Ashley went in, and was getting all prepared to apologize for being in the wrong bathroom, but he never got the chance because Ashley didn't acknowledge him and Aiden couldn't shut up.

"I'm going to ask her out on a date. Like a big, nice one, with dinner and ties and shit," Aiden said. He basked in a reverie for a minute, the kind he'd get beside Ashley envisioning the Trip.

"She came _over_ last night," Ashley said, and then she put on her angry, disgruntled face that was meant to say lots of words at once, like: _Why did you leave me with her? You're both such sluts,_ and _Why are you so feminine?_

"She _did_!" Aiden exclaimed. "Oh, man. Why didn't you wake me up?"

"Even I knew that," Glen said, nodding with a strong sense of superiority. He disliked Aiden by default, and hated listening to him sound anything remotely positive. He hadn't, in reality, known the whereabouts of the girls, just that they had been together around the table, and that he had fucked, and it had been quite good and violent, per Madison's usual attitude.

"You just seemed so peaceful, Aiden. Really," Ashley said, and the image of him gone on her couch brought a sadistic expression to her features. His nasal issues also reverberated in her memory, and she resolved to video tape it the next time it occurred to that extent.

The four got around eventually to getting high, and returned to class thereafter. By that time, Ashley had Anatomy, and she was thinking of something clever and snappy to say to Spencer and then perhaps Kyla later when Patrick pursued her down the hallway and beckoned her attention.

"You left your, you know, uh, like, stuff, you know. In there," Patrick said. "In the place." Leaning down with his hands on his knees, panting like a dog or an excited child, he seemed particularly cute and skinny. She walked over to him and patted him on the head, because she deemed it appropriate, then took a textbook and a pack of squares from the hand he now outstretched.

She looked at it. It did say "Anatomy" on it, which sounded about right for third period, but she didn't remember ever having gotten the textbook, or at least if she had she had lost it or maybe set it on fire or something.

"Well, the Ports are mine. But this? This isn't mine. I don't think I need this," she decided. The bell rang. Ashley walked off abruptly and determined that she should probably go smoke another cigarette, now that she was holding half of a pack right in her grasp, and all.

Patrick sighed, stared at the ground a few seconds before flipping open the cover to see if it actually did belong to her. Spencer walked past him a second later and he smiled some and nudged her as she swept by.

Patrick gave her the text book, which had in fact been hers, and she thanked him and shared a brief exchange with him before the bell rang. Ashley killed her smoke in the courtyard and observed the occasion from a distance while returning to class. They were blushing at each other, and talking like normal people--people who were similar, who laughed for the same reasons and watched movies on the weekends, sometimes.

Ashley did not like it at all. Because she had not yet actually showed up for more than ten minutes in any of the classes, it seemed reasonable to just go home. First, she bought three gs, just because she wasn't going on a run with Aiden that night and already had the money to throw around, and it was always kind of nice to have it. Especially around Kyla she was paranoid and suspicious about it, and would never buy it on runs so that she could pretend she never had coke when they asked. Amid these processes, hiding it safely away in her old bedroom on the third floor, she looked akin to a squirrel storing is acorns and dodging invisible birds.

In accordance with his sinister plans, Aiden took Spencer out on a date that night. He made funny jokes the team and he had thought of at lunch that day, and she laughed on beside him because she had the energy to do so--as disturbed as the previous night had left her, the other parts had made her jovial and responsive.

They went to a nice-looking French restaurant and Aiden paid the bill and pointed out things that sounded cool on the menu. Neither actually enjoyed their meal because they had chosen based on such poor criteria, but they smiled while they remembered the past month or so and thought fondly of where they had ended up.

As dusk broke and the night descended upon Aiden's truck, the two distanced themselves from Los Angeles and drove to where the horizon beamed on out at them, all colors and moon and sky and little stars peeking out from behind murky, lovely clouds. Leaning over the edge of the elevated area, the ocean stretched out beneath it all and loved the twinkling city and beyond just as much as they did.

"I don't think Kyla would ever really fight that girl. She just wants someone to be pissed off at all the time who's not actually there for her to get in trouble with," Spencer said. It wasn't hard to talk that night. There were things to say; people, their friends, seemed interesting, like characters.

"Are you kidding? No, no, Spence, Kyla's the most bitchiest person in California. Maybe even the world. Except for Ashley. She's bitchier, and if she weren't so busy bitching she'd be killing chicks, I think."

"Oh, Ashley's not that bitchy. Not really. I think Madison is the most bitchiest person in California. So far, at least."

"I'm sorry Ashley's so mean to you. She shouldn't be so mean to you. I think she really does feel good towards you, but she's always been pretty rude and stuff. I mean, she just shouldn't be like that."

"Is she?"

"Is she what?"

"Mean to me?"

"Uh. I think."

"No, it's okay. She's just strange, I think, that's all. It'd be stranger of her if she started being overtly generous and welcoming with me, or something like that," Spencer said, pondering the concept as if it had never even occurred to her.

"Sometimes when she gets really fucked up with me, she's really nice."

"Really? How's that?"

"You know. Like she cares. And not just about me, but, like, everyone. And she seems so much happier. And she's like, 'Fuck Los Angeles, fuckin' California, fuck it all--let's go to Europe, now, Aiden, best buddies, and fuckin' _Sean_ can come!' She loves that Europe thing."

"Do you?"

"Well, yeah," Aiden said, then he looked around, in case maybe someone he knew would pop up next to the truck and record the subsequent conversation. "I mean, I do love it. I don't think about it as often as she does, right, and I'm not so bent on it, but it just sounds so nice. It makes everything seem so much better."

"Hm," Spencer offered. She wasn't sure what else there was for her to say.

"But it scares me, sometimes, more than it comforts me. Because sometimes I think, you know, what if we don't go? What if February comes, then March comes, then summer and we're still here, and maybe the college deal starts to work out kind of, and we both graduate, and go to the community place, or I guess she could buy her way into somewhere a lot better, too. Like, Spencer, if we don't go, we can't do anything. We'll have failed, it'll be the worst crime we've ever committed."

Spencer wrinkled her forehead, tilted her head, and thought about it for an indefinite period of time. Aiden lay quiet beside her, but by the time she spoke his thoughts had drifted to basketball, and sex.

"I think you will be okay, and I think Ashley will be okay. And I think you will do it, if you still have to."

"What?"

She sat up and glanced at him.

"I'm going to med school."

"Right."

"In less than a year, I'll be there," Spencer said. She laid back down on the hood of the car.

Aiden nodded, and stared hard at the open space as he tried to understand where she was trying to go with her statement. Besides the awkward things, like whether they'd still be together, he couldn't come up with much. Overhead, the stars faded and the moonlight became highlighted by a dark, dark black, and when Spencer turned to him the shadows slid across his profile.

Handsome, she thought. And in front of them, so was the sea.


	6. Chapter 6

Okay, please review.

* * *

The next week was quiet, and Homecoming week. The King High cheerleaders paraded down the hallways in the afternoon and Kyla and Spencer went shopping for their dresses on Sunday. There was nothing particularly surprising about the arrangements for their group, except that Clay had shyly approached Chelsea recently and asked her to go with him, and he had been grinning for days.

The two had become acquainted when Clay and Sean began to congregate regularly amongst each other, driving back and forth across the city like it was a board game. Clay, quite frankly, was learning much about consumer economics in the black market, and he was enjoying it, and when the night stilled and the wind was beating against their faces on the highway, they'd talk about literature and beautiful music.

Clay had sat in Chelsea's art studio one evening, when Sean was out, and the two had talked rather about art and love. Clay thought he was in love with her then: admired her smiling eyes and her soft voice and her big, extravagant pieces. He talked to Glen about her and told him about the poetry he felt in just looking at her. Glen had acted skeptical, but had considered the words as he lay beside Madison the following morning. He, too, loved the poetry of a woman, before he took a shot from the table beside his bed and forgot all about it.

Spencer and Kyla were discussing it as they shifted casually through pretty gowns in the back of the store. Kyla, especially, was well-financed for the endeavor, so they felt at liberty to be getting excited and serious and apprehensive about the whole ordeal.

"Chelsea was my best friend here, before you came, and all," Kyla said thoughtfully. "And for a really long time I was best friends with this girl named Joanna."

"You talk about that."

"I know I do. And Joanna, she and I used to always be shopping like this, like, all the time, instead of drinking or driving around or going to parties. And she had this brother, right? You know what I'm talking about, Spence. Your best friend's brother, it's sexy. It's just sexy. And, I mean, his name was _Tim_ and he had the hugest..."

"So this is Clay's first girlfriend."

"No way!"

"Yeah. In Ohio he was always holed up and he never got all infatuated with girls to even ask them out or anything. But I think he was okay with that. I'm glad he and Sean are friends, now; he's changed."

"Do you think he'll pick up, maybe, drug-dealing? He could be like, your pocket drug-dealer."

"I don't need a pocket drug-dealer."

"No, but, for real..."

"I guess he could be my pocket drug-dealer."

Spencer's favorite dress that she found was blue and simple and cute. It brought out her eyes, her mother said, when she showed it to her on Wednesday.

Earlier on, at school, Spencer sat with Patrick in the courtyard. Always, they would talk about things Spencer couldn't discuss other places--thoughts she had forgotten she'd had, things she'd forgotten she'd cared about. His response would be enthusiastic and sincere and empathetic, remembering a Catholic childhood that seemed so preposterous in big, wide Los Angeles.

"What are you doing this weekend?" he said this time, something that did not come up often in their conversations. It was taboo, because that weekend was spent with Aiden, as was every other. Also, they were different people, here, because Patrick's friends didn't love to drink, and there existed a critical gap in innocence with the subject.

"You know, weekend stuff," Spencer said, feeling a little uneasy at the question. "Homecoming's coming up, you know. So. Homecoming. Maybe."

"Hey, I am going too! I got a suit already, it's really nice," he said, and his cute, skinny eyes sparkled at the image. "We outta all go to an after party together. My mom gave me twenty-five dollars and I can maybe get a couple beers with you guys."

"Twenty-five dollars?"

"Yeah! Not bad?"

"Um. You can have a few beers, probably."

"Yeah, yeah! It'll be cool. I'm going with Sherri.'

"Oh. She is...nice," Spencer offered. In the far reaches of her mind she was disappointed, felt betrayed that he'd gotten a date after flirting with her like a shy little boy for days, then not mentioned it.

"Has Aiden asked you?"

"I asked him."

"Did he say yes?!" Patrick exclaimed. His countenance became intense and excited, and Spencer felt for a moment that he was a little gay.

"Uh, yes."

"He is cool."

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah. He's so good at basketball. Your brother's good, too. They're both really good at basketball," Patrick said. "Coach always makes them starters. And one time, last week, Glen showed up on a ton of Vicodin and Coach patted him on the back and was like, 'You should really cut practice today. Just show up sober for tomorrow's game.'" He did several more imitations of Glen, Aiden, and Coach throughout his speech, all of which were gruff and manly and booming.

"Glen shouldn't do that."

"What?"

"Vicodin."

"I gave those to him," Patrick replied, suddenly thoughtful as he recalled the rest of the story. "My grandma had a bunch and he asked for some, so I gave him like nine and he just swallowed them right there."

"Jesus," Spencer said.

"Hey, that after party?"

The bell rang. They had been sitting out there under the California sunshine for a nearly an hour.

"Sean's throwing one at his apartment. I'm sure you can come."

The two split up within the building. Spencer had class with Kyla, and for a bit the two talked about Christine.

"She's been home for almost a week, Spencer. Doesn't that seem a little suspicious to you?" Kyla said, sighing as if absolutely overwhelmed by the prospect.

"No."

"Do you think she got laid off, or something?"

"What does Christine _do_ for a living?" Spencer asked, realizing it was something she wondered often, and every time she encountered her friends' mother.

"I think she like, goes around, marrying rich men," Kyla said, nodding to herself. "You know, my mom? She's still up in Baltimore, right? She's a freakin' _poet_. And Dave, my stepdad, he was a consultant."

"Wow."

"But do you think she'll leave soon? Ashley's all moody and we haven't been able to smoke in front of the television since that first night she decided to suddenly stay over."

"I'm sure it will be fine, Kyla."

On Thursday, Spencer brought her Homecoming ensemble over to the mansion and she and Kyla posed before tall mirrors and drank the good beer. It was the kind of moment she'd like to have shared before a dance, and she was enjoying herself. Already considerably drunker than both of them, Ashley and Aiden lay strewn across the bed, eyes drooping before the night had begun.

By the time they had killed one of the twenty-four packs, Kyla and Spencer felt a giddy buzz and Aiden and Ashley sounded even more sluggish and stupid. It was a charming scene for the group, and they basked in it for several fleeting seconds.

Christine knocked on the door when it somehow became ten-thirty at night, and they were in exactly the same position.

"What are you kids doing in there, making all that noise? Do you know how late it is? Don't you have school tomorrow? Are you taking drugs?" she asked, all knowing and severe.

Everyone simultaneously put their cigarettes out on the closest surface, and Aiden put a lit blunt in his pocket. Kyla pranced to the door in her dress.

"How does she know we go to school?" Ashley asked.

Christine exploded into the room.

"What's that smell? Ashley, have you been giving them marijuana?" Her features were sharp and cold and plastic, and her voice was exactly the same. In any situation she would occasionally glance at her expensive watch, like she was trying to suggest that her time was being wasted.

"No," Kyla said.

"Oh, Kyla, that's beautiful!" Christine said, forgetting her previous concern so as to gush over something trivial. "When did you get that?"

"Sunday, Christine. You should see Spencer's. It's so cute, and Aiden's got this pink bow tie we bought him and I think he wants to wear it probably."

"Ashley, is that yours next to the dresser? Kyla, can you talk some sense into my daughter, please? If you must act like a hooker, you might as well not dress like one, too," Christine said, theatrically and importantly.

"I think it's pretty," Kyla said, frowning.

Aiden put out the blunt in his pocket with his fingers. He yelped in pain and jumped straight up in the bed, glancing around awkwardly.

Christine stared for the appropriate amount of time and started to leave, having forgotten the previous conversation.

"You all get out of here soon. I don't want you girls staying up all night."

Aiden nursed his scalding fingers as Ashley glared hard at the ceiling, wearing a distinctly angry expression.

"Damn, Ash, your crib is shit when that bitch is around," he said. "She's causing all kinds of psycho drama stuff."

"What, and when do we get to go to your fucking house?"

"Dude, you know Ray isn't down with me," Aiden began, but he was interrupted.

"It doesn't fucking matter. This isn't a fucking hotel."

Suddenly and clumsily she leapt to her feet and approached the hanging garment.

"You know what? I'll show that bitch. I didn't even fucking buy a slutty dress. She's just fucking assuming. Look at this, look at this dress. This isn't slutty. I actually went out of my _way_ not to get the slutty dress," Ashley said. Still talking she spent about five minutes carefully examining it, then went about getting changed.

Aiden, feeling radically sensitive and hurt, exchanged glances with Kyla, and the two promptly excused themselves from having to be around an obnoxious drunk Ashley. They had also attempted to exchange glances with Spencer, but she had missed the bulletin and was still messing with the make-up as the two deserted.

"I think I should go get us some more beer," Kyla had said.

"I'm going to go...to the other side of the house," Aiden had offered. He thought it was obvious anyways.

When Spencer looked back, Ashley was halfway into her dress and struggling obscenely with the straps. Her mouth was spewing swear words at a rapid pace and she seemed absolutely determined to complete the process.

Spencer walked over to her and put her hands on her waist, sliding the straps over her shoulders, bodies touching slightly as Ashley turned around in her grip, leaned against the wall behind her.

"I'm sorry your mom would say that," Spencer said. "I like it, anyways."

"She's a bitch," Ashley said. She was settled into the dresser behind her, had let her fingers trace their way up the girl's sides and her legs brush against hers.

As they talked they made it look almost as if it were normal: the proximity, how Ashley could feel Spencer's breath next to her cheek, had her fingers at the hem of her jeans and on skin, but she was so drunk and she wanted so badly just to _touch _her more right then that in spite of its comfort, it had to be the most improper thing in the world. Consequently, when the knob on the door shook she jumped three feet and scuttled onto the bed.

Kyla had more beer. Aiden was on the phone.

"So, Sean, my good man, what do you say on bringing some girl for us? Hooking up the number one homies, you know. No, man, you can never hook up the number one homies too much. We'll fucking come with you, then! Get Chelsea to come. No, I'm serious. It's just four of us. We're coming, come pick us up."

"Who was that? Are we getting coke?" Kyla asked.

"Sean."

"Yes! We are getting coke!" Kyla shouted. She gave everyone big, friendly hugs.

"Where are we going?" Spencer asked, noting observantly Aiden's lack of denial.

"On a run to some shit hole way out there. We're going to mob up there in Chelsea's van and the Escalade. It's supposed to be really nice stuff, though, Spencer, and a tight party. You'd like this stuff if you were all into liking this kind of stuff. Come on."

The "gang" collected the remains of the alcohol and piled into the two cars now parked in front. Clay was with them, and Glen and Madison, who made out shamelessly in the back seat on the way there.

They drove for an hour and a half under a growing mass of stars before they found the suburban street that pounded with music and life and activity. They walked a block from the cars and Sean led the way into the house, where they quickly dispersed.

Spencer wandered about the establishment with Aiden's arm draped around her and Kyla's voice in her ears. They found a couple kids Aiden knew and chatted eagerly with them, meanwhile getting drunk all over again.

"Do you go to King High?" Spencer asked one girl who had been speaking frequently and affectionately. It was then that she realized the girl was glaring at her, apparently upset by her presence.

"Oh, no, Aiden and I met at that club, right? Do you remember what it was called?" Spencer understood this response to mean that the girl had fucked Aiden, and resented Spencer for having achieved some sort of commitment with him.

"Hm," Aiden said, thinking hard. "No, I guess I don't, Jenna."

"Jessica," she corrected.

"Right, right. From that club?"

"Yeah."

Sooner or later the majority of the populace filtered out and all of the remaining people were scattered throughout the living room, gambling or smoking bowls or perhaps doing everything illegal at once.

Everyone but Glen and Madison sat with Sean's cousin, who owned the place. A drug deal en masse had just occurred and most of the people in the circle were looking apprehensive and satisfied and eyeing their goods compulsively.

Ashley broke out her shit beside Aiden, trying to pretend she didn't have some at home from having bought so consistently that month. She cut up her lines and snooted a fat one, found a moment among the quiet chaos to eye her friends lovingly before putting on a lazy grin.

Spencer was rolling a joint with Kyla, not because she had become infatuated with smoking, but because it reminded her somewhat of origami, or something intricate and old. They smoked it, then, and the lot of them got very, very coked up. All talking fast and pointedly they binged Thursday evening away, walked outside to douse themselves in a blanket of disappearing stars.


	7. Chapter 7

Okay, this is about two updates in a span of like, not very much time, and I do not think I will do that much again, because it's kind of difficult, and I can't write ahead and strategically like with all those masterpieces because I get too apprehensive about it.

Anyways, you guys should definitely hook it up on double the reviews in light of my efforts. I don't own SoN, still.

* * *

Outside in the yard, the party was dead, and the friends sat among the grass watching the dusk fade away as well. They were loving the scents of the air far from the city, loved the sunrise when it met them afterwards. 

Spencer had done cocaine for the first time, almost by accident. It was apparent at some point that she had become drunker than usual, and her words were slurred when she refused the first line, and incoherent when she turned down the second. It was spread across counter tops, being licked off the edges of mirrors, everywhere around her and she felt so friendly and normal that it became a mutation of an instinct when she did it herself, just as she had seen Kyla do it seconds before.

She snooted that first line and her wasted daze became a rant regarding nothing, and she was conversing heavily with an unusually solemn Ashley under the shade of a willow tree.

"And Patrick, see, Patrick's going with Madison's best friend. Do you know who I'm talking about? She is short, okay. And I don't think they're going out or anything, but they're going to Homecoming, is what I'm saying."

"Sherri."

"Yeah, and, like, he's pretty tall, and she's short. It doesn't work well at all."

"That's true," Ashley said. "You are quite the dumb slut to be wanting to fuck your girly boyfriend's teammate."

"I don't want to fuck him, or anything. He reminds me so much of Ohio. I talk to him and I'm back in Ohio and he's Paulie and he'd never feel like he needed to have sex or anything, and we could just talk and watch television, I guess. And go out on stupid group dates and kiss, but be shy about it," Spencer explained. "Do you remember when kissing was shy, Ashley?"

"Never."

"No, I know you do. It'd be in Truth or Dare, and then when I was a little older we'd hold hands in public and be close to each other and it'd feel so safe. Deborah gave Justin oral in eighth grade, then later she had sex with him. Once she'd done that, it was like she couldn't kiss shyly anymore. I hated that; I think she did too."

Ashley examined a wad of money in her hands. She leafed through the bills, counting carefully, and wondered who on Earth would give her so much money, who would give any of these kids so much money, and who would try and split the innocent blonde girl more than one line.

Ashley, personally, had not been the culprit. She hadn't even offered, and it hadn't occurred to her much that Spencer could possibly be the obnoxious coke type. It drained her for some reason, thinking about it, but then she would forget because she was so upset that it rattled her at all. She tucked the cash, at this point, into a secret pocket in her purse, next to what remained of the G she had bought, and returned her attention to a monologue that had not stopped itself for her contemplation.

"Paula found one of Glen's condoms, and I'm pretty sure she already knew Glen and Madison had a lot of sex, but she really freaked out. She's opposed to both pre-marital sex and contraception, so it was all a huge mess. The problem with that, though, is I'm pretty sure she uses contraception when she has sex with Dr. Ben, and that's adultery, which seems kind of similar to pre-marital sex in not being a good thing morally at all."

"It's _worse_," Ashley said. "I think everyone should have all the pre-marital sex in the world. As long as_ you_ haven't had sex with them, yet. I think you spawn AIDS."

"No, no, no, Ashley, you don't really believe that."

"Which part?"

"Sex should mean something. Just a little bit. That's why it scares me so much, because the way everyone here does it, it doesn't mean anything. I spent all this time expecting to wake up the next morning and be different, and understanding something crucial, but it happened all wrong."

"My first time was in sixth grade," Ashley said.

Spencer turned to her, smiled the kind of smile she might have seen on her father.

"What happened?"

"It was with this older boy I'd known for a while. It was one of those exciting nights, where we'd all snuck out to hang out and smoke together and do all these things we thought were so _cool_, and we went to the roof of their complex and got on these swings together," Ashley said. "We talked for a while, and it started to rain a little bit, but when we turned around, everyone had left. So we went into this room, my friend's little sister's bedroom, and we sat there kissing, all intense. I hated it. It was so rough, and we sat down on the mattress and got a little bit undressed, and somehow we ended up having this weak, awkward fuck. I thought all sex was going to be like that, so I decided I didn't want to do it again until high school. I did do it again, though. The next week I saw him and we ended up in these tents outside, and it happened again."

"What about the boy now?" Spencer asked. She felt like she was being told an elaborate tale, was enthralled by the details.

"I don't remember his name."

"So you forgot about him?"

Ashley mulled that over in her head.

"No," she said. She could still feel his lips against hers beneath big comforters and in dark rooms, could still hear how different the late hours of Los Angeles sounded to her at that age, on that one evening.

"Good," Spencer said.. She began to speak once more, fluidly and too much, and Ashley made a mental note that Kyla was a bad influence on everybody she knew.

Homecoming arrived that Saturday, and the "gang" got dressed up appropriately at their respective locations. Aiden had organized a limo, and he came to pick up Spencer bearing a fancy corsage and that pink bow tie, with Ashley, Kyla, and her date already in tow. Kyla's date was one of those last minute ones, as they usually were for her. She had picked the first attractive single male she could think of and attached him to her side.

All the girls looked pretty, like they were supposed to, and Clay wore a do-rag Sean had forced upon him. Sitting isolated in the back seat, he looked the same shade of glum he usually did when not absorbing the joys of hypothetical love. When he met up with Chelsea, however, she toyed with it and said nice things, and his features expressed then a brighter sort of misery.

At the dance they took the back entrance to get past the breathalysers, as the majority of them had made a point to become rather intoxicated beforehand so as to enjoy the dark and the strobes and the sweat. Aiden pulled Spencer in a zig zag across the gymnasium where it took place, talking to various friends and girls who flirted with him regularly.

None of this bothered her much, and at some point they were separated within a crowded area, and this didn't bother her either. Instead, she opted to find Patrick, who was alone in the back, shifting from one foot to the other silently.

"Where's Sherri?" Spencer asked. She had not yet seen the two stand directly adjacent to each other, and was curious about how interesting the height difference would appear.

"Oh, she's over there. She's kind of hopped up on something, but I don't know what. Do you think she's anorexic?" he asked nervously. "Because the team got this pizza, and she kept talking about her weight instead of eating it. And she's kind of thin, too." He sounded genuinely worried, like he was asking himself the entire time what Jesus would do if he encountered this.

"Maybe," Spencer said. "Look, I have this joint I rolled. Do you want to go smoke it with me?" Spencer would roll a joint every single time she had been in possession of marijuana, now. In the confines of her purse was a beautiful spliff, and she would have rolled another one right there if someone were to hand her a sack.

He grinned and nodded gratefully.

"I get high really easily," he said outside, facing a cool breeze. They were leaning against Patrick's ride on the outskirts of the parking lot, and they'd look like indefinite, wriggling lines of shadow from the closest doorway. Patrick did, in fact, get high quite easily. His eyes got red and he felt a little slow, making for poor discussion and follow-up.

Spencer was kind of exasperated. She glanced over at him and forgot, however, so as to appreciate that he wasn't smoking a cigarette and that he wasn't feeling his way up her body.

He recovered from the initial shock of being stoned, eventually, and for some time they talked about the dance, spoke excitedly of meeting at Sean's and seeing everyone together like that.

Ashley had seen the two leave, had kept a compulsive watch on the door as the night progressed. She racked it up to about forty-three minutes before she produced some logic in her mind that would justify her crashing through the back door and towards where they stood.

She did just this, walking with invisible hesitation to the far end of the black top. They were laughing together, and Spencer noticed her approach and leaned across Patrick to greet her.

The next moment was the strangest of that year, and it would be one Ashley would turn around and take apart and overanalyze to herself for a long time. She was seeing this friendship unfold, seeing Spencer find solace in someone who represented the exact opposite of how they had spent the last three months. She despised it more than ever, right then, and when that next moment came she was barging in on what she took to be running away.

Ashley pushed past Patrick and pressed herself into Spencer. Their lips collided and their hips burned together, and her thigh slid between Spencer's legs, against her dress, and she smelled vanilla and young perfume and that one scent Spencer had, anyways, that existed only in certain parts of her house and apparently started at the nape of her neck. Her fingers trailed across the fabric and along her waist, entwined instinctively with hers, and she kissed her so _hard_. For that next moment, she had felt as if she were trying to breathe her air.

They did not feel Patrick's stare, his gaping mouth, or the stun that kept him rooted awkwardly beside them. Ashley kissed Spencer passionately and intimately for what she thought to be an hour; it had been about a minute and a half.

Spencer had kissed back, but she was far too conscious, whereas she could taste the vodka on Ashley's tongue. She gracefully broke it off, removed herself from the other girl.

Patrick was still in awe. He had never actually _seen_ that before.

"Um," he said. "I'm sorry." He didn't think he would be able to say much more than that, and he was right.

"If you tell anyone what just happened, I'll castrate you," Ashley tried, but it wasn't her best at all. She had backed up and trained her eyes on the farthest possible space from Spencer and for a minute didn't care if everyone in the whole _fucking_ world knew, as long as she forgot about it.

"I won't tell, no, I won't. I swear. But, I mean, like, are you guys in a thing? Because I thought Aiden and she were in a thing, that's all."

"Aiden and Spencer are in a thing."

"Yes, we are," Spencer said, thoughtfully. She was watching Ashley carefully, now, observing the lines bending in her face as she spoke and avoided her.

"Go away," Ashley said. Patrick promptly edged his person back to the building, afraid that he would perhaps become a vampire or a pillar of salt if he were to look back or even try to classify what had just occurred.

"Why did you do that, Ashley?"

"Because you can't like him," Ashley said, which was accurate to her. Spencer couldn't like Patrick because Aiden was changing, and Spencer couldn't like Patrick because Ashley kept talking to her and she kept talking back. She hated that somewhere within both equations Spencer was talking to Patrick, instead, and amid these talks Spencer was inevitably wishing she wasn't with them all the time and losing herself to the war that was adolescence in that huge, sprawling city.

"Why would you kiss me, Ashley?"

"What else could I say to you?"

"I don't know. I don't know what you were trying to say."

"I don't like you, if that's what you're implying. That's not what I meant at all. I mean, I know I kissed you, but that only means I like a person about eight percent of the time," Ashley said, and all her words were empty and hoarse. "And I don't want to fuck you, okay? So don't try to fuck me or anything. I just don't want you to like him."

"I wasn't implying that," Spencer said. "Ashley?"

Ashley did not turn her head. She was still concentrating on looking in the opposite direction, and her brow was furrowed as she exerted the effort. Spencer took a few steps toward her, now, slowly brought her fingers to her chin, gently redirecting her gaze.

They were looking each other in the eyes.

"Do you wear contacts?" Ashley asked, because it seemed appropriate, and she had always wondered.

"No," Spencer said. Her hand was still lightly gripping the other girl's face, and she let it drop to meet Ashley's, holding it and running a finger slowly across the palm. "Ashley, why did you do that?"

"You just piss me off so _much_," she tried to explain. Simultaneously, she was trying to compel herself to sever the link between them. She couldn't do it, and she hated that cool breeze that engulfed them there, loitering outside the high school.

Spencer giggled at her, now guiding her back towards the gym.

"I'm not gay, I don't think," she said.

"Neither am I," Ashley said. She always said that, but it was okay, because she denied being straight or bisexual, too.

"Neither is Aiden."

"No, I suppose he's not," she said, setting aside her thoughts to resign herself to that fact for once. They were through the door, then, and her words had drowned in a fast, pounding rhythm. Spencer's skin was soft against her hand, and before they detached Ashley's lips flirted with a smile--somewhere along that walk, her regrets had looked trivial, for a second, and when they got to the floor to ditch with the others she had liked the memory of kissing Spencer.


	8. Chapter 8

It has been quite a bit since my last update, but here, okay? You just read that. And give me reviews, and things, I suppose. Thank you if you enjoy it, and you can tell me if you don't, too, but I probably won't be able to help that much unless you're meticulously constructive about it.

* * *

They were somewhere pretty, away from volume that made their legs vibrate and drinks that made their heads spin too fast, and, more importantly, Sean's compulsive drug-dealing, something somehow unappealing that night. Rather, Ashley had popped several pills of her own source, and completely and entirely by accident she had ended up in the shitty bathroom of the apartment building's lobby, alone with Spencer. She had on this uninterested expression; in fact, she appeared so uninterested that it seemed a painful thing.

"I'll roll us a joint," Spencer offered. She was suddenly apprehensive, thinking about showing someone else her joints. Patrick, although enthusiastic and skinny and cute, had failed to project any kind of analysis or acknowledgment of her joint-rolling skills, and it had been a disappointment.

"Get out. I'm going to lose it," Ashley said. With absolute nonchalance she arranged herself so that she was bent crooked over the toilet, concentrating intensely. Spencer fumbled with a paper absently, watching her curiously when she didn't puke at all.

"Ashley?"

"Stop calling me that. I don't even know you. And don't check out my ass. If you are checking out my ass, you must cease doing so immediately."

"Do you think I should break up with Aiden?"

"Do you think I should break up with Jesus?"

"What?"

"I'm atheist," Ashley said, matter-of-factly. "I was never going out with Jesus for real. But I was baptized—my mom wanted to. And I went to Church once. So, I mean, you're going out with Jesus, but I've never even believed he means all these things people pretend he means. I can't say whether he existed, but I _can_ say I don't like him. So, I had to break up with Jesus eventually. What I did, so I could solidify our break-up, was I fucked the head of a Christian youth group—a twenty-seven-year-old fuckin' _maniacal_ bitch."

"Oh."

"But don't break up with Aiden."

"Oh?"

"No, you can't break up with him."

"Then what about that story?"

"Nevermind the story. You can't break up with him," Ashley said. "Roll a joint now. I'll throw it at your stupid-looking brother."

Spencer smiled, because Ashley wouldn't _really_ throw her joint at her brother, and because maybe Ashley would smoke the joint and nod out a little and enjoy it when she thought no one was looking, a habit unique to moments such as this one, in which the two were separated so neatly from humanity.

She sparked it and she remembered abruptly that Ashley had kissed her. She kept forgetting, kept feeling the moment come rushing back to her for another second because of small things that looked like it: the light draft blowing through the shitty bathroom window, the way the wrinkles would arrange themselves along Ashley's dress, or maybe she'd be considering heat and sex and it all got to being the same.

Ashley, adversely, had the scene burned into her eyelids, and was internally panicking about it. She was worried about all kinds of things all at once, sexually tense from the drugs and undeniably emotionally ravaged by the potential consequences of the ordeal. She slid away from the toilet, abandoning her façade, and could only accept the hit. All of her stress and anger and sleep-deprivation became smoke, slipping through her lips and dispersing before they each flew away, into the evening sky.

It had not really been an accident that they were where they were. They were at the party, before, in this awkward little triangle of Aiden and Ashley and Spencer, and it was so strange, so _different_. Aiden was passing out in front of them, and the two girls had become unpleasantly sober from looking at him. Separating, they successfully avoided each other for about two hours until they had simultaneously ended up beside each other in the lengthy cue to the only bathroom in the entire apartment.

Spencer had taken her hand again and led them to a restroom she'd noticed downstairs, walking in. Ashley had cursed their entwined fingers with a passion and from her purse she withdrew the Xanax, and the Vicodin, and she swallowed them while they pounded down the steps.

"I don't want to go with you. I'd rather wait," she said, but she already knew she couldn't consciously untie herself from Spencer's grip.

Eventually Ashley puked three times. She didn't puke later, and she didn't think she would. That was all she needed.

So that was the shitty bathroom—and Spencer was still standing above her, smoking that little joint with a strange grin plastered onto her countenance.

"It looks okay," Ashley asserted after a long silence. She was observing carefully the J between her lips. "But you need to buy better papers, that burn more slowly."

"Will you pick them out with me?"

"No. They'll think you're a hooker. And it'll be like I'm walking around with a hooker."

"They let me buy some last time," Spencer said.

"Well, you look like more of a hooker every day. You just look like too much of a hooker now."

"Ashley?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Why did you kiss me?"

"Because you're a dirty whore."

"Ashley, I don't care why you did it in front of Patrick, or about what it had to with Aiden. I don't even know what any of that means."

"Because I don't think you deserve to be happy. And I don't think Aiden deserves to be unhappy because of you," Ashley said, and she did not realize that she had begun shouting. "And I hate having to look at you—and I hate your eyes, and your face, and what you look like when you're talking to that stupid little kid, and I hate his face, too."

Spencer stared at her, the way she always would: her head tilted, her brow creased in concentration. She was thinking.

"Aiden and I drove together," she said after a few moments had passed.

"God damn it all! Fuck you, fine, I'll drive you two back home."

And somehow, suddenly, they were driving home from the party, and the lights the city made were burning into Ashley's eyes.

"Where do I turn?" she asked, her grip on the steering wheel tense. Occasionally she'd remove a hand to itch herself frantically, and in another minute she might have let her gaze wander, in which she would explore her surroundings with appreciation and peace.

"At this next stoplight. No, the next one," Spencer said. She was sleepy and drunk now, hazy in her efforts to dislodge Aiden's head from her lap.

When they reached Spencer's house, it was tall and symmetric and perfect, and Spencer could hear the leaves rustle a little on the trees because everything was so quiet and still and tranquil.

Ashley hopped out in her driveway and lit up a square. She felt good and was marveling ironically at the appearance of an upper-middle class neighborhood. It wasn't like the mansion, and it wasn't like the ghetto from which they had traveled.

"Are you going to smoke that right here?"

"I'll smoke this wherever the fuck I want. What are you, the smoking police? No, in fact, you're not the smoking police at all. There is no smoking police. I'm going to fucking smoke this cigarette right here."

"My mom's in there," Spencer responded, watching the cherry burn and filter the smoke into the wind. Ashley ignored her and casually ashed on the other girl's foot.

Spencer frowned and removed the square from between her fingers, at this point leaning her body into Ashley's, eyeing her expression curiously. She was a little shorter than her, but when Spencer lowered her chin a little their lips were separated by only centimeters.

"Kiss me again," she offered.

Ashley did kiss her. Their lips didn't part, and it was chaste, more like a mutual application of pressure than any kind of oral contact. She could still feel it when she climbed into her car, however, like a soft buzz weighing against her mouth.

When she pulled out of the driveway, Aiden still unconscious in her backseat, she was watching the living room light flash on and dim a little. Behind the wide window that stretched across the left side of the house she could see Spencer in there, speaking with defensive gestures to her mother.

They both looked upset, but Ashley had begun a great, powerful grin, and she was enjoying it, so it remained in spite of the circumstances. In her rearview mirror their argument disappeared and faded into the background. She turned right, and left, and lost herself to the sounds chaos made in the city before she finally got home.

Ashley towed Aiden to the front door by his arms, his feet dragging clumsily up the steps and his pants sagging dramatically. She stopped and set herself precariously against the doorway when they finally got inside. She closed her eyes and it felt good.

She wanted to talk to Aiden about their first kiss—in that same place, to the rare static of Raife Davies playing his instruments in the basement of his own house. It had been so awkward, for some reason, even though by then she had kissed many boys and it was becoming simple and natural.

They were short and only mildly pubescent at that point. Afterwards he'd hugged her, and she had been glad he was warm, because it was practical. The wind had been making her shiver.

Her eyes were still shut tight, concentrating on something far from her line of vision, when another car pulled up. First she opened them, and that took five seconds. Once she had achieved that, Ashley broke out into a mess of curse words and compulsively shoved Aiden into the nearest closet.

Christine exited her Porsche with little elegance and much stocky, aggressive movement, most likely from having seen the boy passed out halfway on her porch. As she pushed past her daughter and into the front hall, she was seeing his dead weight fall through the coat closet door, too. She was very upset.

"What is this?" she asked. "Why is your boyfriend here this late? Have you been drinking? I thought we went over this!"

Ashley had just finished cussing, and realized that she needed a sufficient response to her mother's request.

"No, Mom. Someone put a roofie in Aiden's soda. You know what a hunk he is. They wanted to daterape him."

"Oh, Jesus Christ, Ashley, don't use that slang on me. I'm calling his father. I'm sure he wouldn't allow this." Here Christine flipped open her cell phone and began to browse numbers. For those moments she had been very angry, but examining her missed calls caused her to lose interest, and when she looked up again she was only exhausted, wanting to make haste with the process.

"Do you know Mr. Dennison's number?"

"Oh. Yeah. But, I mean, you know, it's just Aiden. He has a boyfriend, now."

"Does he?" she asked. She was charmed by this. Two of her hair stylists were gay, and she often considered them better partners in gossip than many of her other rich, uptight middle-aged woman friends.

Aiden woke up a little and puked on the floor.

"My God! Ashley, that is absolutely grotesque! You are grounded, and you are going to clean this up. I am going out of town tomorrow afternoon, but when I come back for Thanksgiving I don't want to hear anything from the maids about your extravagant partying. And you clean this up! I am kicking this boy out, this is just _unacceptable_."

"Wait a second, Christine, don't get feisty there," Ashley warned, but she wasn't paying enough attention to put in the necessary effort. Instead, she took to admiring the stars to the right of her. Meanwhile, her mom hesitantly reached into Aiden's pocket and found his cell phone.

"Ray?" Christine asked. Ashley slowly adjusted her vision to observe the dialogue that was about to take place. Her eyes had widened and on the paranoid side of her mind she was going into overdrive attempting to figure out how to prevent an impending explosion.

"Don't do that," she tried. It didn't work. On the other line, she could hear someone screaming, loudly and rapidly and too violently.

"Ray, you need to pick up your son from my home. I don't know what they did tonight, but he is passed out in my house and there is something very wrong with him."

Ashley felt like she was in a book. She raised her eyebrows, let her gaze wander pitifully to her friend. Christine was trying to talk like a parent, and the inflections she used in her voice made her head hurt. Walking over to the sullied spot on the carpet, she kicked her companion affectionately in the side.

"Aiden," she said. "Wake up."

He groaned, twisted under her scrutiny.

"Wake up now. You're getting picked up. In the Chevy."

It took some time for him to look at her. When he did, he started to cry for a second. The tears trailed down his face and melted into the rug beside the vomit.

Aiden was escorted by his white trash stepfather into their Chevrolet. They drove far away from the neighborhood, and Ashley wanted to watch the car until it was only a dot, because it seemed to her that that was the best way to take care of him from there. Three feet away Christine was saying something, and a lot of it, but when Ashley woke up in the morning she understood that the woman had left early.

Ashley made a point to get drunk with Aiden all weekend. Consequently, when day broke she had invited him over and they had crawled into the loft in one of the third floor bedrooms and essentially stayed there, smoking a pretty hookah and drinking tall boys for hours that refused to trudge on. No one but Kyla knew much about where they were, but when they showed up at King once more on Monday they were both immediately thrust back into the social cycle.

At lunch Spencer sat down next to Ashley instead of the basketball team. She had not yet figured out how to renew her friendship with Patrick and feared the prospect of having to maintain a dialogue with anyone else at the table.

"What did you do on Saturday?" Spencer asked. She was smiling, warm and quiet.

"I talked to a hit man."

"I didn't see Aiden or you at all. Did you guys lock yourselves up somewhere and binge all that stashed alcohol?"

"No. We went to Canada. To see a hit man. About you."

"My mom saw me kiss you. She thinks you're a black hole and I'm going to die the next time we're within a ten-foot radius."

"You will if that hit man does his job."

"Well, you need to make her think you're not bad. Because you're not bad. You know that, right?"

Ashley gasped indignantly.

"I will not succumb to your negative vibes. I am completely a badass," she said, trying as she did so to flex her powerful, powerful muscles, for effect. "You just are unable to appreciate this because you're always taking advantage of me in my few times of poor judgment. It's all wrong."

"I liked kissing you," Spencer said. She looked down, as if embarrassed, and when she glanced up she was blushing.

"I find you rather whore-ish."

"Ashley," she said, but she could not figure out where that sentence was supposed to go.

"Do you want to go get new papers? I don't actually want you to come. I am just trying to ditch you. But I am going to the smoke shop, so if you still want papers, you'd probably want to come with me. Not that you should come or anything."

"I would love to come with you. Take me."

"You bitch," Ashley said, and her face portrayed all the types of anger she had ever known or recognized at once. However, when she went out the parking lot she unlocked her doors, and Spencer got in the passenger seat.

The vehicle had soon drowned in the concrete. They headed to the city.


	9. Chapter 9

I have a pretty definite ending conceived, and a good outline of what remains of the story, but there's plenty of time for both to change at this point. I'll write whatever I have to, I guess, but I assure you there is a goal I'm trying to reach. Also, although most of the plot is dependent on the characters' interaction thus far, there are portions of the story that will unfold based on more tangible events, and you will probably recognize those when trying to figure out where all the shit is going.

Here is a chapter. Thank you for the reviews; they are very inspiring.

* * *

Spencer thought that the store sparkled when she walked into the back room. Behind locks and thick glass sat elaborate pipes and bubblers and zongs and all kinds of extravagant things out of which they could smoke, colorful and distracting. It was not unlike Oz, had Oz been able to exist in so insignificant an allotment of space. 

"I need two packs of Zigzags," Ashley said. She paid with a well-scratched ID and a fifty-dollar bill, so Spencer was able to spare a minute in awe before she was suddenly ejected from the establishment

"Those were really pretty," she said once she had realized they were back on the sidewalk. She leaned down to gaze into the front display, examining the details of a ceramic bong with uncertain interest.

"What do you know about a pretty piece? I bet they stop ripping when you touch them. You can't hit my pipe anymore."

Spencer frowned.

"Where should we go to roll joints?"

"Who said I'll roll joints with you? You sure are getting ahead of yourself today. I'm taking you home so you can tell your mom you were skipping school to have a lesbian crush on me, and I'm going to go back to my house and smoke my weed." They both ended up at Ashley's, anyways. She was having difficulty keeping track of her threats.

Ashley led them into Kyla's bedroom to get the bong and they ended up making camp there. The two sat adjacent on the mattress while Ashley coached Spencer's marijuana-related skills theatrically.

"Now hit it," she was saying, lighting the bong for her and watching her ride it out and cough hysterically. The whole scene seemed insane to her, but she was enthralled in the idea of teaching. Everyone else she hung out with had understood the functionality of water pipes within the earlier stages of youth.

Spencer sat back against Kyla's pillow, grimaced at the scratchy feeling enveloping the back of her throat. Sitting up somewhat, she could see Ashley staring down at her hands, now, her brow furrowed intensely.

"I like you," Spencer said.

Ashley, who had been in the process of breaking up a nug, stilled her fingers. She stood up, sat down, then stood up again and walked around. She tried to pace in a circle, but there were things on the floor, so it was crooked, and she ended up pacing in a square. She felt stupid.

"I wish you had kissed me because you liked me too," Spencer said. "And I don't believe that you kissed me because of Aiden, or Patrick. Not entirely."

"I don't like you. In fact, I despise you."

"I know," she said. She quickly redirected her gaze to her own lap, where the chamber sat full of the stale smoke she had failed to clear.

Ashley reached over and set the bong on the floor, next to the notebook with the foundation of their joint on it. She fumbled around on the bed until she had inched her way into straddling the girl. She took her hand and let her thumb run down her nose, across her lips. She gripped Spencer's chin delicately and they kissed again. It was the third occasion.

Ashley let her weight rest on her legs, and they kissed for a long time. She was thinking about what it meant for a kiss to be shy, because she thought that in front of Spencer's house, they had kissed shyly. The tiny idea alone felt more difficult to understand than sex and passion and hormones combined, so she was doing it again: slow and innocent as if the human body were something beautiful and had all this potential for more beauty, or as if it were something she had never seen before.

The touch was simple and calm. Spencer tilted her face downwards slightly and Ashley found her mouth against her cheek. She began to speak, and she could feel the skin on her lips when she made words, or breathed those heavy breaths.

"You're not gay," Ashley had said, and that was how they broke apart.

"But I like you."

"No, because if you're not gay, then you do not like other girls. I am another girl. You have this all confused."

"Ashley?"

"That's it; I'm breaking up with you. This relationship is too weird, with you being allowed to use my name like that. You have to stop."

"We're not in a relationship. I'm still going out with Aiden, and you just shut me down then kissed me again. How long have you known you were gay?"

"Too long," Ashley responded, in a way that implied it had been forever and she couldn't remember, but she knew the exact date. She had been sure of her attraction to girls since she was nine, after her dad brought that stripper home for his birthday—that's eight years, and Raife Davies was born in June.

"Well, I don't know if I'm gay. But I liked kissing you, and I like you."

"Stop talking like that. You're giving me a migraine, or something. Now, quick, smoke me out before I have to explain to you that I hate you again."

"What, and then you'll kiss me?"

"No. No more of that. Kissing is silly."

Spencer grinned at Ashley and put her hands on her waist, as she was still propped up on the lower side of her body.

"You're kind of silly."

Kyla barged in on their conversation and they were frozen for five minutes in their compromising position.

"What the hell?" she asked at last, staring at her bedroom as if it had been invaded by various preposterous-looking aliens. Several awkward glances were exchanged.

"So, uh, Kyla, my friend. There's a bowl in the bong," Ashley offered. She had wanted to get off Spencer as she said this, and maybe make it look as if she had never even been on Spencer, but she had not yet formulated a physically plausible fashion of doing this.

Spencer did it for her. She pushed Ashley off her and off the bed, and the three shared a weak, horrendous laugh. Kyla sat down in her chair and lit the bong.

"Did you guys skip together?" she asked, her voice grotesque and high from a long hit.

"We went to a paraphernalia shop downtown and got papers. But we did not have sex," Ashley said, having relocated to the floor. "We had so little sex that we actually had a negative amount of sex. It was still repulsive, mind you, but what you just saw was a completely absurd hallucination as a result of your chronic drug abuse, and has nothing to do with what was actually happening in here."

"Is that right?"

Spencer nodded eagerly, and then wondered to herself whether Ashley's sister was ever able to comprehend her, either.

"Can I roll a joint?" Ashley set the surface with the broken up weed on it next to Spencer. She attempted to do so with a certain degree of disgust and rage, but she didn't want to spill it, so the motion ended up appearing rather gentle. Internally, she felt disappointed she had wasted that opportunity to demonstrate to Kyla how little the situation had to do with liking Spencer.

"So are you going to break up with Aiden?"

Ashley squinted her eyes and scratched her nose. She spotted a good-looking area of the wall and concentrated on it hard.

"I don't know, Kyla."

"He's a player, you know. But this girl, right here, she's not too much better. Actually, I think she used to get laid more than Aiden. I don't know what happened. It's like ever since the school year started she has just been very, very chaste. And it's not like she's gotten unattractive, or anything. Girls still want to fuck around with pretty gay Ashley, right? But it's almost like she's forgotten about it."

"I'm right here," Ashley asserted. It was a lame thing to say, she thought to herself, and she went on to scroll through excuses to leave.

"I think you should go out with whoever you want to go out with, Spence."

"I'm going to go bake some cookies."

"You! You, don't you dare try to get out of this. I'm going to bake cookies for a second, too, Spencer. We'll be back to smoke your joint in a few minutes."

Kyla pursued Ashley up the stairs.

"She is so _nice_, and you just had to go and do whatever the hell _that_ was, just because you have some kind of abusive, horrible crush on her."

Ashley produced her most menacing glare and stared her sister down from up the steps. She was obligated to tell her something, then, and she dropped her gaze and accepted it for a second until she realized she could say something else.

"Is Aiden okay?"

"He is absolutely on his _rag_, Ash! Like a little teenage girl. What did you guys do the past two days?"

"We smoked and drank, then we talked about all those shitty parties we've gone to and which ones we liked best and who we met. And we drank a lot."

"That sounds incredibly weak."

"I don't want Spencer to break up with him."

"You're a stupid masochistic scene kid," Kyla said. "Come back down here. Finish smoking with us and I'll drive her home for you."

Kyla's room had a bright pink theme to it, and lots of stuffed animals, none of which were actually from her childhood, rather accessories she had accrued through overly generous boys and too much access to money. They smoked Spencer's joint when they returned to the room's neon depths, and once she had puffed sufficiently and passed the J off Kyla took a teddy bear and clutched it to her chest. Every time the other two would exchange any words she felt like maybe the house was going to collapse.

Ashley called Aiden as soon as Kyla had left with Spencer.

"Did you see Ray today?" she asked. She had only recently realized, standing on that stairwell with Kyla, that she had not seen him since the conclusion of their drinking binge. They had arrived kind of almost on time in the morning, but Aiden had immediately made for the gymnasium. He could have gone to fraternize with his sweaty friends, or even gone to homeroom to flirt with the pretty teacher, but instead he went to pump iron and consider steroids.

"Yes," Aiden had said.

"And?"

"I don't know."

"I'm sorry that happened," Ashley said. "You should come over tomorrow."

"It's okay."

"Your birthday is Thursday."

"I know."

"Are you going out?"

"Are you going to throw me a party?"

She _was_ throwing him a party, on Friday. She didn't care if it was a surprise, but she found it absolutely necessary that he show up for the party to actually be his. He did not need to be probed into it.

"Are you coming over tomorrow, too?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Let's get a thirty-pack."

"The truck is still at Sean's."

Both of them understood this to mean that it had probably been stolen by now. Ashley glanced at the clock, reading on it a number that foreshadowed a long, winding evening.

"I'll pick you up and we will go to Sean's," Ashley said. "I'll call you when you need to come outside."

She showed up at Aiden's abode an hour later, with Kyla, and there they all sat amongst each other, silent and predominately sober. At one point, driving to Sean's, Aiden seemed like he was trying to fall asleep in the back seat. He didn't, though. Instead, he had a bruise on his face, and he began to touch it, the same expression clouding his features the entire time: bitter, bitter contemplation.

Sean, ironically enough, was posted on the stoop of his building when they got there. He wasn't typically home that early in the night, so the chance meeting was welcome and they were glad they had someone to make functional discussion with.

"Have you seen Aiden's truck?" Kyla asked.

"Shut up, Kyla," Ashley said. She was making a point to do normal things in front of Sean, like tell Kyla to shut up. In the car it had been too painfully apparent that there was something abnormal occurring.

"Damn, don't bitch at her like that. Is that how you all are going to greet me?"

"I love you, Sean," Kyla said. Then she hugged him. She thought he was the most charming boy in the world.

"I parked Aiden's truck in the garage where I usually park mine. Motherfuckers don't fuck around in there."

"Thanks," Aiden said. They performed an overly complex handshake, but somehow, even after this, the vibes remained poor.

"Good stuff, Sean. Which way is this garage?" Ashley tried.

"You're not leaving that fucking soon. You all come up for a bit, I gotta show you something."

Up among the highest floors of the place was Sean's apartment. In the comfort of those barren walls, the lighting was always dim and the curtains were always closed and there was constantly a blunt rolled, for good measure. A tall, gaunt man passed Ashley a fat one when they walked in.

"This is Travis," Sean said. He pointed to the guy and motioned his head a little. He was trying to make the three look at him carefully, but none caught it—Travis was a spectacle because his brain was fried.

In Sean's kitchen there was evidence that he had been dosing hits of LSD, and there were sheets upon sheets spread throughout the room.

"Six bucks straight for my good customers. You know this shit's got some good visuals, and it's got that tasty bitter shit to it."

Ashley had anticipated this situation rather well, in spite of the fact she had not expected Sean to actually be home. She had brought all of her cash, and with a portion of it she purchased three ten-strips, to distribute and sell among her friends and people she could skeet easily.

They found Aiden's car with the stereo system completely removed.

"I'm sorry," Ashley said.

"It's okay," said Aiden. He climbed into his truck and tailed Ashley back to her house. The doses went in the freezer, and the three passed out to the monotone hum of low-quality infomercials. When they opened their eyes Thursday morning, in the same place and similar positions, it was to a throbbing California sun.


	10. Chapter 10

Here, I'll trade you guys this crazy chapter for some Pokemon cards.

I might not be prolific for a bit after this. I just snooted the last of my speed and I don't really think I should attempt to acquire more, in case I become restless like now and stay up two nights in a row (which is unhealthy, and I am most likely suffering from sleep deprivation). Still, if I can get to writing a new chapter sooner instead of later, then I will give it to you.

* * *

Spencer baked Aiden a cake with her dad. He wrote a message in script with pink icing, the letters scrawled across the thick chocolate on top.

"Happy 18th Birthday, Aiden!" the cake declared.

Glen was nineteen years old, and attending his senior year for the second time after successfully flunking out in Ohio before they moved. He punched Aiden in the arm at basketball practice, made cracks about him buying Spencer cigarettes.

"It's illegal for you guys to fuck now, too, right?" Glen asked him between exhausted pants in the locker room. The steamy shower scene during this part of the day typically resembled a gay male orgy, and that afternoon was no exception. The two were sitting half-naked next to each other and breathing heavily like dogs. They were both, by coincidence, thinking mostly about sex.

"Only if you and Madison are illegal, too. In fact, I'm pretty sure the age difference is bigger, there. Aren't you like, twenty-six or something?"

"Thirty-eight in April, nigga. Madison told me she fucked you like, twice, and you shook like a bitch the entire time."

"Madison tries to tell people her breasts are real, sometimes, also, but you don't see anyone believing that."

Aiden found Ashley fifth period chain-smoking cigarettes alone in the disgusting second floor bathroom. He rubbed the bruise on his cheekbone and waited for her to notice his presence.

"Yes?" she asked. He could tell she was reading, now. He did not care what it was.

"Do you want to get a bottle, or something? You know, like a pre-party? Because, I mean, if we trip the doses tomorrow we won't even get a chance to get drunk. So let's get drunk tonight."

"With just the main homies!" Ashley exclaimed. She hopped to her feet and shoved her book into her purse. "Let's go to Clay's."

"You know Clay is Spencer's brother? They live together."

"Oh. I see."

"You'll have to like, see her mom. Dude, she's going to bitch you out, or something. So like, I don't know, if you ever go anywhere near her you should make sure you have a good, attractive shank."

"We can get that bottle tonight and split it, and when I kill it, I'll smash the bottle and use that as a shank. On Clay's mom."

"I didn't know you knew who he was."

"Oh, yeah. For sure."

"I mean, honestly, every time anyone would mention his name at Homecoming, like, a week ago, you were just like, 'Who the hell is that? Why won't someone tell me who he is?' and then at one point you did talk to him, and you called him 'Jovan,' twice."

"It was a pretty good guess, Dennison."

"Mum's boyfriend is in jail right now," he said, bringing it up so spontaneously partially because he had yet to mention it to her, and partially because she seemed to be going insane. Her responses had become a disturbingly friendly shade of rude, and she was overly enthusiastic about relatively inconsequential matters.

"Ray?!" Ashley asked. She shrieked accordingly, even though whenever Kyla punctuated her sentences in this fashion she chastised her sorely. The right conclusion, Aiden determined, was that she'd already broken into the acid and was having a giggly, paranoid trip as they spoke.

"You're on acid!" he told her.

"It's okay."

"Ray is in jail right now, and he should be there until my mom can pay bail. So we should collect the 'gang' at my place."

Ashley shrieked again. She seemed delighted.

Aiden frowned at her and went back into the school. The bell rang in mid-step towards his History class and the venue became flooded with adolescents, the majority of whom were dressed sloppily and skimpily. Absorbing the scents of perfume and sex and schwag pot, he felt as if that sea among the lockers was akin to a pool full of whores.

Three minutes later the halls were almost clear and he was trying to make the roundabout route to his class even more roundabout, to kill time. He forgot these intentions when he saw Spencer darting clumsily for a classroom not far from him.

He called her name in his manliest voice and grinned in pride at the way it sounded echoing off the walls. Spencer smiled at him and he smiled at her, and then he picked her up and embraced her while the second bell clanged.

"Ashley took some of my birthday party acid," Aiden said.

"Right now?"

"Yeah. She's in that one disgusting bathroom power-smoking her entire pack. But I think she'll go do something rational once she runs out. Like, maybe she'll go buy another pack, or something."

"Are people taking that at Ashley's tomorrow?"

"Yes! Yes. But if you take it, you shouldn't take it until all the people leave. Or else you'll have a bad trip."

"I don't think I'll take it," Spencer said. She shook her head to herself, ashamed that there was a section of her brain that was completely convinced she would do it if Ashley gave it to her.

"That's okay. Do you want to come to my house tonight? Like, a pre-party, with just the main homies in the 'gang.'"

"Can you give me a ride?"

"Of course, baby."

Spencer eyed him carefully and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"Call me when you want me to come," Spencer said. "Should I go find Ashley?"

"I've already talked to her."

"I know, but should I go find her?'

"Maybe if you want to get some beer and cigarettes with her," Aiden said, and it was actually a rather thoughtful statement for him. He asked himself whether he should go find Ashley about three times every day, and those were generally the two contingent factors.

"I'll see you after school, okay?" Spencer said, and Aiden mentally groaned at the implications. This meant he was going to have to go to all kinds of classes, some of which he had not been to in several weeks.

Spencer decided that she _would_ go find Ashley, although she did not need cigarettes or beer. She pursued this endeavor first in the aforementioned disgusting bathrooms. She knew of a large quantity of disgusting bathrooms in the building, which made the search more difficult, but eventually she encountered Ashley walking out of one.

"Are you okay?"

"Shut up, bitch," Ashley said. She had been mumbling, and once she had said this she continued the mumbling. She believed that it was getting her thoughts in order.

Spencer sighed, wanted to roll her eyes at the cheapness of the reply.

"Don't call me that," she said. Ashley's mumbling ceased immediately. She stared at the other girl for several moments, and Spencer thought that she could practically feel the big, round pupils burning into her face.

Ashley gripped Spencer's arm and dragged her into the bathroom. She pinned her against the far wall and ravished her neck and collar bone for a while before the two realized they needed to organize some kind of dialogue.

"You're not a bitch," Ashley had said when they had first slid down against the peeling tiles of the bathroom's wall.

"Listen, it's Aiden's birthday. Do you remember that?"

"Fuck you. Of course I fucking remember that. What, do you think I'm a fucking crackhead, now?"

"Why would you want to kiss me on Aiden's birthday?"

"Why not?"

"You make me feel like shit all the time. You do too many dangerous things and right now you're treating me like a prostitute. And you make me feel worse about Aiden. Do you want me to break up with him? I won't do it tonight or tomorrow, but I can. I just need you to say so."

"No," Ashley said.

"No to _what_?"

"No to you breaking up with Aiden. It's not his fault you're obsessed with me. Quite frankly, it's your fault."

"You're obsessed with me, too. And I think you're a little bit obsessed with Aiden."

"I am not obsessed with you! And I am not obsessed with Aiden."

"You _are_ obsessed with me. Just try and ditch me. Right now," Spencer said. She scooted away from Ashley and pointed at the door.

"I used to have a lot of sex with Aiden, when I was littler. We fucked all the time, and we were reckless about it, and I swear to God, I don't think it was that good, but at the time it just seemed so _high-quality_. But, anyways, he was kind of a pussy, and once I figured that out, I could never fuck him again. See, the problem is, Spencer, he _was_ a woman, but not _enough_ of a woman."

"Come on, leave me alone in here. Ditch me."

"Did you not like my story?"

"Go buy a bunch more cigarettes, I guess. I don't know. Try it," Spencer said.

"I _do_ need cigarettes," Ashley said, observing the patterns that traced across the ground beneath her. "This is a trick! You're too convincing. You're probably trying to steal my secret spot. Well, fuck you; I'm staying here until you leave. And then I'm staying here a few seconds longer, and then I'm leaving as well. And I'm going to go to Aiden's and smoke cigarettes _there_, and wouldn't that just show you who the boss is?"

They were leaning against that tacky wall until three. Around five the "gang" had efficiently mobbed Aiden's home on the other side of the city, their cars lined up illegally on the tiny road.

Spencer brought her cake and they all lit up bowls and enjoyed the sugar, with the exception of Ashley. Instead, she was feeling surreal sitting back on the edge of the sofa, and it all seemed like a television show, entertaining and ironic. There was much yelling and rock music where they had the bass all turned up high, so that she could feel the house shaking harder each time the sun crept a little further down the horizon.

Aiden had four siblings—that's three little brothers, and an older sister, who'd moved away. The group stayed congregated in the living room and sometimes one of the boys would dart through and do something awkward, so that the teenagers would become quiet and compulsively suspicious. In the kitchen behind them, his mother was trying to keep her younger children at bay. She had circles under her eyes when she finally got a moment to look out at her son's gathering. They had already drunk the majority of the household beer.

Mrs. Dennison tried to find her vodka in the back of the cupboard and was met with empty space and an I.O.U. In reality, Kyla was cradling the empty bottle wile they sat before the television, but the woman couldn't see that, and she was upset when she tried to speak with him.

"Are you going to go on a run?" she asked, her arms folded and stern. She was incredibly tired and her head was pounding from a long, deafening day. She turned down the music on her way over.

"Do we need to?" Aiden asked. He quickly glanced around to acquire the status of the alcohol supply, determining reluctantly that it was necessary. Because Ashley wasn't drinking, he had figured he might have even have had some left over come the following evening, but it was too little an amount for too many people.

Ashley funded a handle of Captain and some Budweiser, as a treat for her friend and his mother, and there was plenty of merriment and foolish singing thereafter. Spencer, once again failing unintentionally to maintain her sobriety, went on to prompt several conversations with Aiden's brothers, asking them each elaborate questions and telling them fun, PG stories. It wasn't a bad way to spend a night; she loved children.

They all fell asleep on a large, ratty mattress in the Dennisons' sun room, engaging in a peaceful slumber amid the ashtrays and not-quite-empty cans of beer that dripped some onto the sheets. Ashley awoke, at last no longer tripping, to the sound of birds chirping above her. She stretched and yawned and gazed lovingly at the dirty laundry scattered across the wooden floor. She could tell it was real wood because Raife had known things like that, and pointed them out, and that place on which she focused then was the only visible part of the floor next to all the people passed out on top of each other.

Ashley smoked a Port and at some point the rest awoke and they ate pancakes together at the diner a few blocks away. They were delicious, and it was a nice thing to do when they should have been attending classes.

Having planned the event with some effort, Ashley was anticipating and prepared for a heavy crowd at her house. Kyla and she went back home early to stash their valuable things, and then they ordered twenty pizzas. These pizzas were good, but the yard and first floor were full by eight, so it wasn't nearly enough. Eventually, Ashley gave up entirely on trying to feed a starving public and left her sister to tackle the feat.

Sean and Ashley, having found numerous people with money who were interested in doses, transferred their business to the basement, separating several wads of green near the mini-bar. They owned a pool table, too. It was pathetic.

Spencer sought other friends when the crowd thinned in the kitchen. She had avoided becoming intoxicated because she had done so at Aiden's the day prior, and she didn't think it would be right to be drinking consecutively like that. It was the kind of trend that made her grimace when she thought empirically of her friends' lifestyles and her own.

"I have seven hits left," said Ashley. She was sober that night, too, only in a drunk kind of way. Primarily, she was waiting to trip acid, but she wasn't sure how many she wanted to sell and how many she wanted to use.

Spencer sat down next to them when she saw them, recognizing their existence among the kids flocking about by locating Sean's afro. She stared at the cash, flaunting itself on the coffee table, and cocked an eyebrow at the two. She was waiting for one of the skaters drinking a few feet away to casually swoop off with half of it.

"You can't have any acid, Spencer," Ashley told her. She gave her a very pointed glare, with lots of threatening connotations in it, in case she thought she could have some acid.

"I wasn't thinking I would."

"You don't have a choice. Do you think four is good, Sean? I think four is good. Do you think I'll be able to take care of the party? Yeah, for sure, I think so, at least. I mean, people are already leaving, kind of."

"Think whatever the fuck you want to think, you're not going to be able to control any kind of shit."

"Fine. I'll take all seven."

"Shit, you're a dumb bitch. Give me that shit." Sean took her foil and the tweezers and turned to his other side. "You're gonna try some of this shit, Spencer. Don't listen to that ho for a second. Stick out your tongue."

"Um."

"Come on."

He placed the blotter in her mouth.

"You keep that in there for as long as you can. I'll be right back."

Someone upstairs pumped the speakers. Spencer played with the papers with her tongue, sighed somewhat shakily as she tilted her head to contemplate the ceiling. She noticed after a moment that Ashley had been indignant and obnoxious throughout the entire dialogue, and soon her attention was there.

In about forty-five minutes Spencer could feel her jaw clenching, her thoughts working in pace to that incessant voice and the noise of generic rap music.


	11. Chapter 11

Okay, well, here.

* * *

Spencer saw and felt many things that night at Ashley's, tripping several hits of LSD. The most profound, she suspected, was the way she saw each and every one of her adolescent peers, dancing in circles around her: they were dirty to her then, and it occurred more than once to her that they seemed to treat each other in the most contemptible ways.

She had sat on that couch in a growing daze for about an hour and a half, and when she stood her surroundings began to change. She realized that Sean and Ashley had left her, and that she was alone.

Spencer heard a ruckus above, watched with deaf curiosity as the people in the basement dispersed. She looked at a clock that tried to suspend itself in mid-air—she saw that it was about eleven at night, and noted after some thought that the party was ending early.

Her journey upstairs and the subsequent conversations with her frenzied companions were mere sparks of moments among the climb her mind was making, through forests and up mountains and into the sky. She went to the third floor, then, because it was the closest she could get without wings.

Spencer sat with Kyla and Ashley in that old, desolate bedroom on the east side. They were speaking words to her, but they all fell out of their mouths and went to the sky as well. It was haunting, instead, to see only their wide eyes, pale faces, the mute yet hurried movement of their lips.

She loved to listen to these people, such characters, so determined to exaggerate every aspect of themselves for the sake of identity, for the sake of owning something, maybe for the sake of forgetting something else. It made her smile her father's smile, without condescension and only with that remote sense of love.

Below, Sean departed with his profit. He walked out of the house past what had evidently been a crashed party; one still heaving dying breaths, with bodies on the lawn and cars dragging themselves haphazardly through the big gates. These gates were often open and a familiar symbol to him, so Sean drove through them carefully, concentrating on the road and letting his trip escape his mind for the purpose of survival.

Behind Sean was Aiden, presumed asleep, rather tripping LSD himself in a dark corner in the living room. His position was fetal and his sense far gone; he was lost and by the time the majority of the people had been ejected from the mansion, he was no longer truly a part of any of it. His birthday broke midnight and he barely knew who he was, where he was.

He thought: "If only it were this simple, to understand everything. Why is it that every time I begin to comprehend, I realize that I am only going insane?"

He thought this thought long and hard, and he thought other thoughts too, of broader distinction and universal relevance. He thought in ultimatums, in powerful creeds, with existence itself as his primary guide.

The crew reunited in the morning, but first the three girls sat together between white walls, too close and so far and everywhere at once.

That was time and space, Spencer supposed—how this room was not a room but too much of a room, perhaps a box!, how minutes could pass and her mind would register hours, how 7:30 was one and the same as 3:00 and how 8:30 could have come after both, at the same time as both, could have come a million times and been the same.

It was all wrong, but it was exactly as right as it was supposed to be, or even as it had always been. The drugs riddled the children's minds. They fell back against a carpeted floor, eyed a ceiling that had nothing to offer except itself, and they embraced it.

There was a dialogue of consequence among many dialogues that were really just meaningless monologues, occurring at the climax of Spencer's first experience with acid.

Ashley was talking about the Trip in an atypical way, guarded and sad and solemn. It was for her a lonely discussion, the loneliest of several topics she returned to that night, but Spencer began listening only when her voice broke a little, mid-sentence.

"I never told Christine about what I planned to do when I graduated or dropped out of high school, but she found out I was leaving her from a school counselor freshman year."

"How?" Spencer asked, noting that she knew little of this freshman year and even littler of Christine's knowledge of her own daughter's ambitions.

"I told the woman, 'Fuck you, bitch, I'll be gone when I cash in anyways.' Then I told her some quips about it, mostly Europe. Especially Italy, which was my favorite part to think about at the time."

"Christine forgot about that," said Kyla, who had never heard this story. She was texting on her cell phone with very active fingers.

"I think so."

"What did she tell your mom?"

"She told her that she should pay more attention to me, because I wanted to become a whore in Venice."

"I'd like to go to Venice," Spencer said. "And all over the place. I might if I ever have the time."

"I have the time," said Ashley matter-of-factly.

"Do you have the purpose?" asked Spencer—curious, not accusatory.

"Every damn purpose that's worth something," Ashley replied, completely offended. She did not go on to mention any.

"I'd really like to have a family some day. Some children, I think."

"I want a dog," said Ashley.

"And a house, with a nicely-mowed lawn and a cat in the window, like in the Neil Young song, you know…"

"I've always liked nicely-mowed lawns. And windows."

"Your front lawn kind of looks like a private golf course to me. Are there hired people?"

"Just Ricardo," Kyla interjected. "He's enough of a man for all sixteen holes."

"I'll have to move when I start to live. As much as I can. So I won't need any Hispanic pool boys, unless my jet has a pool."

"Jonas does the pool, not Ricardo."

"I think it's best to live wherever I live," Spencer said after a while.

Ashley was drawing a picture. It was scratchy and a little bit poor, because she was very high. The picture was of the dog she could have, next to a mailbox, picking up the newspaper. Her favorite kind of dog was a big dog. The dog in her drawing was a Great Dane with lots of cute spots. Scooby Doo, who evaded villains and smoked pot with Shaggy, his homie, was a Great Dane.

They were asleep at some point or another. Their morning started at about three in the afternoon. They were awakened in an ironic reversal of events in which Aiden found the three spread across the floor in awkward physical states. The light from the well-risen sun threatened to explode upon them from between the blinds.

"Ashley," Aiden said once. He then said it again, but louder, and then louder once more. With no response he became frustrated. He kicked over a bong.

Kyla groaned and turned around to watch the water sink into the carpet and trickle slowly towards her. She yelped, inched away, wreaked havoc with the admonitions that followed. Everyone woke up, and it all ended up very effective.

They went to get lunch, each exhausted and seeing traces in their food and in the big blue dome of a sky. Aiden, in particular, had not slept, and was still going through the complicated process of tripping acid, involving much doubt and paranoia and few functions of actual living.

"How was your birthday?" Spencer asked Aiden, peering over her menu from the opposite side of the booth.

"Oh, you know," said Aiden noncommittally. He actually had no idea. He had forgotten it was his birthday for the last half of his trip, and recalling it did little to inspire an appropriate response in him.

"A lot of people came," Ashley said proudly. "And we ordered a lot of pizza, and a lot of people ate it."

"Then you kicked everyone out like two hours later. Like, crazy kicked everyone out. You were really excited about it," Kyla said.

"Yes," said Aiden, trying to remember among the varying degrees of chaos when exactly this had occurred.

The four returned their attention to their menus, and each ordered items that they would have typically found delicious. That afternoon they did not find their meals delicious at all, however, because everything still looked dirty and none of them had regained their appetites yet.

What lack of clarity had existed regarding the previous night's shindig was soon eliminated when Glen and Madison joined them, approaching hesitantly at first, and then rudely, pulling up chairs and eating off their plates.

"That was kind of fat last night, Ash. With all that pizza and shit," Glen said. He took a bite out of his sister's sandwich.

"If by fat you mean bullshit," Madison added. "I mean, we got there, and then your bitch ass straight up ejected us. And I told this dumbass he had to be sober to drive me home, so he thinks that means he should take a bunch of fuckin' L-S-D."

"But I wasn't drinking."

"You ran over a rabbit!"

Glen looked very sad. He had felt horrible about that rabbit, had mourned it even as he was forced to distance himself from the road kill and the scene of the crime.

"And you ran into the Davies' fucking gold-plated fence shit."

"Okay, let's not talk about that."

Ashley ignored him by habit, but made a mental note in the back of her head to get something done about that.

Spencer left when Glen and Madison left, was quietly pulled from her seat beside Kyla. Aiden smiled at her walking past him, that boyfriend smile, and Ashley attempted to rekindle that disdainful gaze, but she was tired: instead, Spencer watched her grimace.

The ride home was pensive and long in spite of Madison's unerring desire to talk through it. To the ups and downs of fluent Los Angeles slang and edgy Latina inserts, both Glen and Spencer wondered about the nature of an evening spent in such a strange, rapturous state of mind, and in such a place as any of the places they had gone.

Glen and Madison had sex when they were back at the Carlin's. Spencer found her mother sitting at home that Saturday, watching the news with masked intent. She sensed her daughter's entrance and prepared herself for lectures, then for maternal concern drenched in reproaches and the assertion of a flawed perception of morality.

Paula had not seen Spencer since Tuesday. She told Spencer that she was worried about her.

"Spencer, you know, I'm worried about you."

Spencer had been heading up the stairs, but then she stopped to frown at Paula, backtracked her way into the room, where their voices blended with those of the reporters on the television.

"What's wrong, Mom?" Spencer offered personably.

"You know, ever since you've started hanging around with that girl and that city crowd, you've been forgetting about your family, and Glen says you neglect your boyfriend, and, you know, I don't want you getting involved with all that drinking. You're better than that, and that smoking cigarettes and such."

Spencer, who never had any impulse or sudden desire to drink, had both after that statement. She wanted to become wasted and spit in the woman's face. The spitting part wasn't even important as much as the urge she had to contradict this generalization and bias, especially the invisible hierarchy her mother had assigned to her peers and herself.

"Now, I don't even know where you were last night, and you've been gone all day—I mean, why on earth didn't you call me?—I got back from the hospital for dinner last night to find all my children have disappeared and the only one who bothers to check in is Clay, who was enjoying himself with his sweet little friends—but by God, Spencer, I hope you're not getting absorbed in this lifestyle! You can't just let those kids have their way with you. For that matter, you're too old."

Paula had a lot of things to say, but none that she hadn't said last time, or when she saw Ashley kiss her daughter, which she was still unable to describe orally without becoming entirely too upset.

Spencer listened to every word but did so with disgust. At some point or another she found that she had said the right thing to her mother and had satisfied her, but she did not know what she had said. She went, at last, up the stairs and to her bedroom, fell asleep once more to the lull of birds singing in trees, and the big white clouds migrated slowly beyond them.

"Spencer," she heard, faint and feminine and out-of-place. It was about two-thirty in the morning, the gradual awakening from a prolonged rest. She no longer felt that acid feeling, yet she remained undoubtedly tired and stunned, recovering in pieces.

Someone threw a rock at her window.

"Bitch, open your front door."

Ashley was smoking a cigarette in the Carlin's yard. Spencer did open the front door, and she let the girl come to her room and smoke another cigarette there.

"That dumb bastard of yours has been trying to call you all day. He has some kind of existential angst to deal with and has come upon many epiphanies, except he's still infatuated with you for some reason. Really, none of it fits together, because I think he'd have to have at least one revelation about his sexuality, and how flamboyant he is."

Spencer looked at her phone and saw that she had twenty-three missed calls, which is a lot.

"Oh," she said.

The two began to puff and Ashley spoke with ambiguous reasoning of her presence there, waving around a thick notebook with unfounded reluctance.

About three hours later Spencer felt obligated to ask about this object.

"What is that?"

She then pointed to the notebook, and Ashley made a system of unnecessary gestures to make sure they were talking about the same thing.

"Yes, that. That notebook that you brought with you when you showed up at my house for no apparent reason."

"Are you sure you mean _this one?_" Ashley tried. Then she turned on the radio. BBC came on, and Spencer glanced at the book expectantly.

To the hum of pleasant British accents, Spencer read Ashley's diary about the Trip.


	12. Chapter 12

Here is another chapter. Thank you for any reviews.

* * *

Spencer turned the last page at about seven in the morning

Spencer turned the last page at about seven in the morning. On that last page, neatly taped, there was the messy sketch of the Great Dane standing beside the mailbox.

"Why Toronto?" she asked.

Toronto was written along the bottom. It was underlined very severely, twice.

"I don't know. Maybe fucking Kenya, then."

"You want to buy a house in Toronto or Kenya?"

"No, I want to put my dog in Toronto or Kenya."

There were other drawings too. Some of them were good, dictated with a steady hand and with vivid strokes. Other pages had writing, a few had music. Ashley had taped postcards and scenic photos of various locations into the empty spaces. There was a portion of it dedicated to an itinerary of sorts. It was very full. Throughout the length of the book, there was absolutely no Los Angeles.

The two girls were bent crooked over the worn paper. Spencer closed the notebook, set it down on the bedside table. She rubbed her eyes and her expression was one of fatigue, her slump lethargic. They'd been up all night.

"Do you want me to keep this?" Spencer asked, although she wasn't sure exactly what to do with it.

Ashley grabbed it and sat back against a pillow, clutching the journal against her chest.

"No," she said, then frowned at Spencer suspiciously. "Are you trying to go to sleep, or something?"

"That would be nice."

"No, no, none of that. You're not allowed to sleep. I'm not tired yet."

"Oh?"

"No. You can't sleep until I am ready to let you sleep, and until then you're just going to have to do whatever I say. Come on, open your eyes."

Spencer was laying down and then she was being straddled. She opened her eyes and they were kissing, Ashley's hands were sliding beneath the fabric of her shirt, tracing the wire of her bra.

They moved and the book on the edge of the bed landed on the carpet with a thump.

"Spencer! We're going to Church today! Your father's going, and you're going, and Clay's going, and Glen's not going but he said he went yesterday so it's okay," said Paula, knocking excitedly on the door. Her footsteps followed, echoing down the hallway. It was a calamity of noise.

Ashley was halfway out the window, stumbling awkwardly on the siding for footing. She kissed Spencer goodbye here.

"Get me the Trip Book."

Spencer acquiesced.

"I'm not finished here, so don't go to bed yet," Ashley said. Then she fell. She rolled through the grass and darted back to her car. As she pulled out, she hit their mailbox.

Spencer went to Church with her parents that day and was careful to observe many aspects of the experience, because it had been a long time since she had attended and she wanted to remember what it was like before she had known about the city and city things.

The pews were full and the choir was loud and enthusiastic. High above in the rafters light filtered through the stained glass onto certain ornate crevices. Everything was decorated and the statues were quiet and solemn when the people left. The priest spoke with conviction and described sin as if it were a terrible beast.

She thought about the beastly side of humanity, and she contemplated confession. She decided she would wait, because she was tired and her lips were still numb and partial to her most recent escapade with mortality.

Paula loved taking the family to Church and when Spencer watched the people she also loved going to Church. This time she saw them all as beasts like her, thought that although they grinned under the gaze of God they probably went home and helped Los Angeles corrupt itself just as she did.

Spencer continued thinking about sins and the nature of evil throughout the week. She kept her phone off. At school, she slipped through the halls stealthily and avoided her companions. She talked to Kyla a few times in class, and saw Sean once when he was with Clay and Glen. She didn't even look Aiden in the eye until Friday morning, and that was because he had her pinned against the brick exterior of King High.

"Where have you been?" he asked. His face was next to hers, his breath was on her cheek. "I've missed you."

She tilted her head and let her lips brush against his and thought for a moment that it wasn't so bad.

"I've missed you, too. I've just been swamped with school work. My grades were dropping for a second, so I've been picking up some extra credit, and I was thinking I'd join Model UN so I have a club this year…"

Aiden looked incredulous at first, then deeply confused. He couldn't quite recognize what she was talking about.

"School?" he tried. He stepped back a bit and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Don't worry about it. You're a senior."

"I haven't even applied to any schools yet. Have you?"

"Pff, yeah. You know, UC…something, perhaps. Okay, come on, let's go out tonight."

Spencer looked down, acknowledging the end of her temporary isolation, then smiled up at him and made a point to look curious and excited.

"What are we doing?"

"There's a triple-kegger in the Valley that Sean was talking about, so I was thinking we'd go there."

They arrived around seven. They were in a Victorian mansion. It was smaller than Ashley's mansion, but Spencer figured that it was prettier, and cleaner, and fuller—there was real furniture that was appropriate and lived on. Raife Davies had organized his house like a child, overwhelming the space with large toys.

Spencer still hadn't seen Ashley, so a few hours later she found herself calling her from a gazebo in the back yard.

"Hello?"

She sounded hungover, and asleep.

"Ashley?"

"You have a cell phone, now? Who gave you a cell phone?"

"Why aren't you coming to the kegger?"

"Okay, I have been partying all week, and you haven't been partying all. I don't have to go to the kegger if I don't feel well. So I'm not going to go to some dumb kegger."

"You love keggers, Ashley, and I want to hang out. When can you hang out with me?"

Ashley hesitated. On the other line, she was eyeing her nails compulsively.

"It's not my fault you haven't seen me. I came to school Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. You just weren't around."

"You told me you were coming back, and that I shouldn't go to bed yet. What if I actually hadn't slept? I would have gone insane. It's a good thing I don't normally listen to you."

"I don't even remember that. I'm not going to some dumb kegger. I'll look at you the next time Aiden makes me look at you."

Ashley hung up.

Spencer wandered back into the house, up onto the back porch and through the masses of people. She did a keg stand, and played Beer Pong. She took shots with a shady young adult, then she found Kyla and they giggled and danced and did good party things together. It was all horribly easy for Spencer in that environment and at some point she was horribly drunk and was puking in the cute but trashed second story bathroom and she didn't know where anyone was.

When she was finished and had washed up, she searched a few rooms and found Aiden staring dimly at the ceiling on one of the beds.

"Aiden, Aiden," Spencer said. She shook him and he was rousted. He sat up and looked at her, suddenly smiling.

"Spencer! Sit down, Spencer. I've got to talk to you. I love you."

"I love you, too, Aiden," she said, and she smiled as well. She was drunk enough at the time that she did love him that much, and enough to say it sweetly.

"But, uh, it's about five. We're going to have to leave eventually." He directed her pointedly to the time on his phone. It was 5:45.

"Oh, yes. Eventually."

"So, Kyla's going to need to drive."

"Kyla's drunk, I think."

"I think so, too."

They went downstairs and found Kyla. They determined that she was, in fact, drunk. Luckily, she was on the phone, inventing them a ride.

"Ashley's coming," she told them, and they sat down among several other people in the living room to roll a blunt.

After smoking and sobering up a bit they could walk comfortably under the glare of the sunrise, so Aiden took Spencer into the kitchen and pressed her against the counter. They made out to the static murmur in the next room, felt close and warm and content. Spencer was clumsy and tired but she had forgotten to feel guilty, so it was okay. They stayed in that position until Ashley got there. Spencer woke up in Kyla's bedroom fourteen hours later.

She got up and walked down the stairwell, listening for the familiar buzz of activity below. No sounds came and she didn't find another person until she checked Ashley's bedroom at the end of her investigation. She was lying on her floor, her eyes wide open and bloodshot and brown.

"You aren't welcome here," Ashley said. "Walk home."

"Where is everyone?"

"There's a party at Sean's. In fact, you can walk there, too, if you like. It's a little shady, but there are some shortcuts."

"Is that Jose Cuervo? Are you drunk?"

"Yes and never." Ashley grabbed the half-empty bottle and embraced it defensively. "You can't have any, by the way."

Spencer sighed and sat down beside her, ignoring the gesture and the drink.

"You're a horrible drinker and so am I. I don't want any right now."

Ashley became offended for a bit and pretended Spencer wasn't there. She poured herself a line of double shots and prepared them tediously. Then she gave them a very angry look, staring at them intensely.

"What are you on?"

"I am most certainly _not_ drunk," Ashley responded, which was true but irrelevant. Realistically, she was coked up.

Spencer stood up and walked over to Ashley, grabbed her hand and pulled their forms onto the bed. Ashley was looking down at her, and they were in rapture across the mattress again after various readjustments.

Ashley trailed kisses down Spencer's collarbone, carefully removing her shirt as she sat up on top of her.

"You really are sexy," she said, eyeing Spencer's body with an unusually shameless degree of lust. She was blushing; she turned her head away under the gaze. "If only you didn't sound the way you did. It fucks everything up." Ashley's voice was strange and her speech was rapid.

"What are you doing? You're messed up," Spencer asserted, a little bit solemn. She felt nervous suddenly, sad, too, that this was the condition of the event. Her skirt had come off and Ashley was tugging at her underwear now, kissing along her hipbone.

"You'll fuck me anyways?"

"No," Spencer said after a pause. She pushed Ashley's hands away. "I won't _fuck_ you."

Ashley returned her lips to Spencer's face, let them rest against her jaw line. She was indescribably happy and she was grinning about it, but she became very serious observing the profile of her companion's face.

"Would you like me to make love to you?"

Spencer watched her and felt better, took solace in an expression that lacked the typical emptiness: she was staring at her like they were in a romance novel. She sat up, realizing repeatedly that she was naked.

"I don't know if I believe that you can," she said. Ashley became theatrically passionate. She embraced her, pressed their lips together in a fit of dramatic energy. They became entangled on the bed; she shed her clothes and their bodies molded against each other. They were one shape, writing upon the sheets.

Ashley pulled herself down and moved her mouth up Spencer's thighs. It was a full moon, bright light bounced from the window and off their pale silhouettes. She began to suck on Spencer's breasts, slid her fingers down her stomach and between her legs. The sun was rising later and they were trapped like that, making love beneath various forms of illumination.

They were tired eventually, and Spencer was asleep, attached to Ashley's side. It was about four in the morning. Her breathing was even and calm and Ashley felt angry that she could not sleep herself. She got out of bed and dressed herself, locked the bedroom door and went upstairs. She smelled dust and stale smoke and snooted a few lines in the coke room. She was gazing into eternity here, that yellow-stained wall and that damn dirty carpet and that spot on the wall where a painting used to be…

She remembered the entire night and she hated herself and Spencer for it. Her mind began to wrap into itself again and she smoked a cigarette she had dipped in the bag so that her mouth would go numb and maybe if she smoked enough weed in the next hour she'd erase the entire night and all the things they did and said from her immediate memory. She feared that she was scarred, and she was grimacing at every hint of recollection. It didn't seem right at all.

Aiden and Kyla came home and it was time to function again. Ashley shoved her coke drawer shut and greeted them with half a handle of Jose. She sat with them and found that something had changed.

Spencer was still asleep and she told them, but she did not tell them where. They did not know yet that things were different, but Ashley began to boggle her mind about it.

She wanted to go to bed, and she wished that she could. She wished she could understand why the shiver in her bones wasn't enough anymore, why the buzz about her thoughts could no longer suffice to please her. She hated this stale, sleepy daylight, and she was more tired than she had ever been.

When her friends had fallen asleep Ashley found Spencer still upstairs, breathing the same idle breaths. She wrapped her arms around her and closed her eyes. Three hours later, she was dreaming about a place where birds sang and the trees danced.


	13. Chapter 13

Here is something in a relatively timely manner.

* * *

It was evident that evening that Aiden had discovered the change by the way he was banging on the door. Ashley had been isolated there, resting, for the better half of the day and Spencer had left her to snuggle with her pillow hours ago. She had gotten out without waking anybody, tip-toed through a museum of sleeping bodies.

"Ashley, what are you doing? Wake the fuck up. Let's go to a fucking party," he yelled. He had not so long ago had his late afternoon wake-up coffee.

She replied with a grunt in the form of a long drawl, then threw a pillow in the general direction of his voice.

"Damn it, let me in!"

She climbed out of her comfortable spot and opened the door.

"What's up, pussy?"

"We haven't partied in—let's see, one, two. Two nights. Come on, Ash, get your game on. Thanksgiving's coming, did you know? Tuesday. We have to party tonight so that we chill out tomorrow and the next morning we can feel good and hungry for big dining."

"I don't know. You don't make very good plans. It'll probably suck."

"No, Ashley, no, we're going to go party. We're going to Boz's. Remember Boz? Don't you love Boz's?"

Ashley scoffed. She did love Boz's, but that was just because she always bought tremendous amounts of drugs there. She checked her purse for money and sighed, gave in because it was easy and natural.

"Stop being so feminine. I'll go, but you can't talk to me the entire time. If you talk to me once, I'm leaving. I just can't stand that high-pitched ringing right now."

They got there and the place was bumping again. Spencer had come with Glen and Clay and Sean. Aiden sought her out and embraced her. He kept his arm around her and walked her around the establishment.

"When did you get here? Are you having a good time?" he asked. Periodically he would wave or do an elaborate hand-shake with someone he recognized. He had gotten himself dolled up beforehand and he had his charm turned on every time he flashed his smile. He looked at Spencer and he wanted her to be perfect, too.

"About twenty minutes ago," she said. She looked around curiously and tilted her head, maneuvering under his grip, and Aiden determined with pleasure that she exceeded all of his standards.

Meanwhile, Ashley was with Sean in the bathroom, doing a line off her hand.

"Hm," she said afterwards. She walked off abruptly, dazed. Following some mysterious path of her own she stumbled down the stairs. She walked into the living room and upon entrance accepted a blunt that was in rotation.

She was chilling on it, gazing absently at a fireplace on the opposite wall. She sat down in an opening on the couch. She was floating.

"You like that white girl, don't you, Ashley?" Sean asked. He was bent over the edge of the sofa next to her. "You want some more? I'll give you another ball for two bucks. What do you think?"

Ashley shook her head and found that her mind was far away. She called it back so that she could find a response: she needed to say something appropriate. She had four grams left at home but she liked coke so she wanted more coke, and she had coke money so she should spend it on more coke. However, there was also reason for her to believe that she might not want to buy coke; a reason she could not remember, but a powerful force nonetheless. She decided that there would always be coke around if she wanted coke now or more coke, so in case she wasn't supposed to buy coke and she had forgotten, she wouldn't buy coke quite yet. It had been a conundrum, but she figured it out.

"No…uh."

"Not tonight?"

"No, no, no. Sean, can you roll a joint?"

"I smoke blunts, rich girl. Are you giving up on blow?"

"Giving up? No, see, I just can't buy any. I want a quarter pound of high-quality marijuana." The dank was a part of her solution. She had just remembered that she had been meaning to buy a ridiculous amount of marijuana, and this was the perfect opportunity.

"Why the fuck would I bring bud to this? Ask Boz. I bet Boz got some."

Boz led Ashley to a back room upstairs and she left with four ounces, wrapped individually in a plastic grocery bag that she stuffed into her purse. She walked faintly down the next hall way as if she were a ghost, stopping when she saw Aiden smoking out of a five-foot bong in a side room.

He coughed for a bit then set it against the wall.

"Ashley?" he asked. He squinted at her, verifying her presence. "What's up? Where have you been?"

"Oh, you know, this and that. What is that?"

"It's a gigantic bong."

Ashley packed a few bowls in it and they inhaled it like it was fresh air. They couldn't feel it entering their lungs anymore, hindering their breath. When they relaxed and sat down at last they were heavy with chemicals. Aiden slid down the wall lethargically.

"Where's Spencer?" Ashley asked him. She needed someone to help her roll all of her weed into joints, for practical purposes. She thought Spencer could use the practice, and Kyla, who rolled a skillful joint, had returned to Baltimore for the week. Aiden preferred blunts and he was too fucked up anyways to try.

"She left."

"Where?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Joints," she explained, rolling her eyes when he shot her another incomprehensive glance.

"What?"

"I want her to roll me joints."

"Oh, yeah. She rolls a nice fatty, doesn't she? I didn't even think she knew shit about smokin' and shit, but she does roll a fatty. I think that's special."

"Yes, I love…joints. They've got nice lips and good, bright eyes and strong legs," Ashley agreed. She trailed off. She went somewhere else and Aiden watched her disappear.

"You're fucked up," he remarked. "You should go to sleep."

She did. She woke up at home, dreaming of drugs up her nose to calm that ache of desire.

Ashley climbed the steps and paced her walk and she was back in that barren old bedroom next to the coke drawer. She took it out and stared at it, and her head still hurt and she remembered suddenly why she didn't love it anymore. She threw it on the carpet and stepped on it, shoved her bare heel into the bag so that it was matting the fabric on which she walked. Her foot was covered in it and she couldn't help but stare at it some more: the action was so contrary to all her principles of conservation that she wanted to cry and slap herself all at once.

When Ashley was done glaring at it she licked the ground clean and carefully wiped off her foot and she could grin for some more time on the floor before she had to confront the bag again. When she did she was hesitant, touching it delicately and with caution. She set it on the surface and left it there, then she went downstairs and grinned from her position on her bed.

Spencer had gone home around one in the morning from Boz's, because Clay was still sober and Glen was passed out in the kitchen. That night they had slept in a peaceful place, and were better-rested than otherwise for class the subsequent day.

After school Aiden asked Spencer to come to his house for dinner the next evening, and she affirmed his request without much thought. It was an easy escape from her mother's scrutiny and Glen and Clay were having Madison and Chelsea over, which would make Paula considerably less likely to make her presence mandatory.

Thanksgiving dinner at the Carlins went exactly like it usually did, lost between wine-induced laughter and a mass effort to binge the meal that was available. At the table they talked about family and friends and silly, irrelevant memories. Sometimes Paula would snap at Glen or Arthur. Clay looked pretty glum, except when he was concentrating on playing footsie with Chelsea, in which case he was actually giggling.

Glen and Madison lounged about in front of the television when they were finished eating, instead of fucking. They were too tired and full to fuck. Glen made her play Grand Theft Auto with him, and he found her to be both unsettlingly good and thoroughly intimidating in the process.

Arthur and Paula spoke on the porch.

"I have work Thursday morning," Paula told him when they were talking about spending the night together. "But maybe during the day we could go bowling, or even Mini-Golf."

"Right. Bowling tomorrow."

"I'll just be on call. If I get paged in, I have to go. You know how that is."

"Well, maybe you'll be free, and we can go bowling," Arthur said. He smiled at her momentarily before returning his line of vision to the night falling over their backyard.

"How's that one girl you've been working with? You said you'd been working really hard with her. Tiffany, I think."

"Rita. Tiffany had her baby last year and I only need to see her every six months now," he corrected gently. Then he looked at her again. He loved her voice, but their dialogues made him mourn the art of conversation. They sat like that on the patio in the rear of the house for a long time.

Spencer did not feel any great loss in missing out on that particular dinner with her family, and she felt even better when she got to Aiden's because she liked his family. She liked his mother even when she was frazzled, the way she hung lovingly about her sons, and she liked them, too, in what she saw of them, darting distractedly between different regions of the house. She felt good talking to each while Mrs. Dennison prepared a turkey and she didn't feel very bad about being next to Aiden at the time. She looked forward to eating with pleasure.

They started their meal when Ray came home. He stunk of whiskey but no one in the household showed any sign of being fazed by his state. They weren't necessarily scared, either. The boys wouldn't talk to him directly, yet they would make faces at him when he turned, and organize extravagant gestures to mock him from afar. Aiden's mother waited on him eagerly and ignored them. It was clear, here, that she was spending the majority of her energy trying to make him happy.

Spencer sat across from Ray, watching his behavior with marked curiosity. He was so _burly_. She could tell right away Aiden and he weren't related, because Aiden didn't have nearly as much hair. She thought Ray was a little repulsive in appearance. He had a very imposing beer belly and a nose that was big and round in the middle of his face.

"Spencer, Spencer? Is that your name?" he addressed her loudly and abruptly, and there was a silence that ensued. She realized she had been daydreaming.

"Oh. Yes. Spencer Carlin. Are you Aiden's stepdad?"

He sat back heavily and cocked his brow at her.

"That's right. Where do you go to school?"

"I go to King High with Aiden. I'm also a senior there."

He interrogated her with a snide look on his face. He asked her about her parents, and Ohio, and how she met Aiden. She thought that he spoke as if he were joking, but she couldn't fathom the punch line to his choice of questions.

"So, the big man's your boyfriend, right?" Ray asked. Aiden grunted uncomfortably and he laughed at him, long and throaty in a way that shook the table. He turned back to Spencer and leaned towards her a little. "I think he's kind of a bitch, though."

"Um," Spencer told him.

Aiden spit out his turkey and the muscles in his face contracted violently. He was brimming with anger and a sudden nervous energy, and he began to fidget in his seat.

"Aiden is my boyfriend, and I don't think he's a bitch, and I'm very glad I'm going out with him," she continued five minutes later. The two men had persisted in glaring at each other in absolute silence for that period of time.

Ray shrugged and slapped Aiden on the shoulder in an abstract display of affection.

"You found a woman who likes you. That's the thing to do, boy. Stay with this little girl for a long time," he said, then he winked at her.

After dinner Ray passed out. Aiden brought Spencer to Ashley's because they didn't have to go back to King until Friday. They slept together, exhausted, and she woke up tight in his arms.

It's not so bad, Spencer thought to herself. But then she just didn't think of it; she got up and made breakfast and had a day that was separate from memory.

Meanwhile, at an air port in Baltimore, Kyla was greeted by her mother and her mother's husband and her little brother Jimmy, who was nine now and looked so much _taller_.

She was overjoyed. She hugged all of them at the terminal then she came back to her old house and she wanted to hug too the objects that hung from walls, the look of furniture that belonged to her and that vibrant sense of sobriety! She couldn't hug these things, so she hugged her mother more. Oh, she loved her mother.

Back in Los Angeles, Ashley hated her mother. They ate in silence across from each other at a table that was too large for their purposes, cold meat on their plates under poor lighting. When she was finished her mother crossed her arms and examined her daughter sharply.

"I found your little coke supply, Ashley, and quite frankly, I'm not going to allow it. You are too young to be doing these kinds of reckless things. I took it, and I want you to stay out of trouble from now on, and you know, the school _called_ my _work_ phone the other day saying you were being truant! Truant, Ashley! How low. I don't want to hear anything about that, and you should most certainly _not_ be using hard drugs. Now I dabbled in my day, let me tell you, but when I was sixteen I did not have a stash like that just floating around!"

"Okay, one: I'm seventeen," Ashley said. She had barely touched her food, and was staring at it, toying with it idly while she spoke. "Two: when are you leaving?"

"Tomorrow afternoon."

There were no more sounds after that. It was like the room was empty. There was a candle, and its flame was stiff in the stagnant air.

Christine left the house later that night. Ashley was in the living room, staring absently at a blinking screen, and she heard the engine and the screech of wheels. She felt remarkably alone and inconsequential, so she curled up and closed her eyes and fell asleep on the couch.


	14. Chapter 14

Here is the next chapter. I hope that you enjoy it and please review if you feel compelled to say anything.

* * *

Wednesday afternoon Aiden and Spencer held hands and ate lunch on the strip, watching people refresh themselves in the daylight following a holiday. They were quiet and their heads were clear until the third glass of champagne on the beach later that evening, where they gazed into an open sea.

There was a certain poetry to the scene, and both were compelled to examine carefully that element of the night. Aiden was marveling at the blue of the ocean, comparing it to his lover's eyes, and Spencer was feeling absently along the rough contours of his hand. It was strong and she felt safe as the skies grew opaque.

For several hours they discussed insignificant, easy things—gossip, superficial relations, and drinking. By the time the air had grown restless Aiden was remembering his acid trip. This was the first time they spoke of it at any significant degree of length.

"Did you like your first time?" he asked her. He sounded anxious.

"I don't know if 'like' is the word for it," Spencer said. She paused, noticing his nervous state. "Where were you?"

"Downstairs."

"What were you doing?"

"I was by the couch…you know, a little bit in back of it. Behind it. A couch."

"I didn't see you for at least nine hours."

"That's the way it goes," he explained importantly. "I did LSD three times before that. I was somewhere far away, those times, too. They always go all over the place, but I just sit there. In fact, most of the time I believe that I can't even move…"

"That you can't move?"

"I lose faith in my ability to move. Like I no longer have that power. Then I have to think, and because I spend so much time moving whenever I'm not on acid it's like, super-intense. I think and my brain hurts and in the morning I feel all enlightened and terrible."

Spencer tilted her head earnestly, watching the muscles in his face twitch as he seemed to recall something.

"What did you think about?" she prompted.

"That time, I thought about Ray."

Aiden had his arm around Spencer and his grip on her increased so that she noticed the proximity. She was uncomfortable suddenly, her mind flashing repeatedly to her most recent encounter with Ashley. He was facing her fully now, kissing the skin on her neck. She felt ashamed and she closed her eyes, pretending she was Aiden in the corner of the living room.

"Why did you think about him?" He unbuttoned her shorts, carefully slid them down her legs.

"At first I was thinking about my mom, before him, and how much better off she could be, and what a motherfucker he was, and then I started to love him. I thought about how hard it must have been for him that he could become such a person, so destructive to himself and the people who care about him—I thought that it perpetuates itself, that his redneck father probably hit him like he hits me and made him feel as shitty as I do. I loved him so much for knowing what it was like to be beaten like a bastard I felt like he was my brother," Aiden said, although his tone had elevated into something of disgust, and he immediately returned to kissing his girlfriend and slowly unzipping his pants.

"That's noble," Spencer tried.

"I don't believe it anymore."

"You've done a good job, Aiden."

They had sex again. The stars weren't out and the champagne was lukewarm for their after party. For the duration of their time together Spencer found that she was completely absorbed in contemplation, unable to register her own emotional response to the event as well as its meaning as a whole. She understood his grief and she was sad, and she saw her own fault and was further disturbed—she was not in love with him.

When she was back in the confines of her bedroom that night she did her homework and she started to write down places she wanted to go. Maybe when she had made some good money she could get a vacation home there, or if she went to a school with a study abroad program.

There was also, of course, the most immediate and obvious option, which was the Trip in February, but she chose to dismiss the idea as irrelevant. She did not want to think of Ashley or Aiden and she couldn't think of anyone else, anyways, so this exercise left her mind clear. Afterwards she rolled a joint in one last effort to numb her brain. She succeeded and her dreams were barren.

Spencer slept soundly, however. She slept half of Thursday then stared at her ceiling, then she slept again and it was Friday.

The gang had, on cue, officiated a gathering that Thursday in honor of a successful, vomit-free Thanksgiving. It was the decided goal to vomit that night, instead, before school began, and at their disposal they had an assortment of downers and dark liquor. Once the majority of these condiments had been used, Aiden, Ashley, Glen, and Madison were enjoying the calamity of intoxicated conversation in Kyla's bedroom.

Ashley sniffled. It was not the first time that night that she had sniffled.

"Quit sniffing, Ash. Why you gotta sniff so much? You got something pretty in your pocket? Why would a sweet girl like you be sniffing so much? Aiden, you better get this crazy bitch to stop sniffing," Glen asserted.

Ashley twitched and looked at Glen defensively, inching away from his presence. She grabbed a tissue and blew her nose.

"Mm, she's all fucked up. Look at her all over the place, weaseling about like she got something to hide. Everyone knows you got that blow up your nose, Ashley, and with you poppin' all them other pills, your dumb bitch ass is gonna OD or some shit and you know we ain't gonna know shit to do about it."

"No, _your_ dumb bitch ass, Madison."

Aiden looked at her curiously.

"It's five in the morning."

When they were coherent enough they proceeded to exchange glances. Glen and Madison hastily retreated to the largest bed in the house and Ashley returned to her room, letting herself drown in her nightly routine of insomnia—bloodshot eyes and repetitive motions and watching the sun rise in Hell.

Aiden was alone for a few moments after the others departed, was even surprised when he observed that he had been sitting there for over ten minutes. He was pacing, then, his vision was distorted. He went to see Ashley, because he knew from experience that tonight she would not sleep.

"I don't want to entertain your company," she told him upon arrival. "The only thing I have to offer you is harsh criticism and bitter rejection."

"Ashley, I think I'm falling in love with Spencer."

"Who?"

"Spencer. The blonde girl I've been dating."

"Kendra?"

"Spencer."

"Oh. Kendra."

"God damnit, you bitch, Ashley!"

"What do you want me to do? This is clearly all your fault! I can't clean up your dirty laundry."

"What?"

"You can't blame me for you falling in love with Spencer. You screwed yourself over."

"Dirty laundry?"

"I'm trying to sleep here, you know."

"Wait, Ashley, Ashley," Aiden said. He sprinted to her bed and nudged her as she turned away from him. "Do you think Spencer's not in love with me?"

She clasped pillows over her head and attempted to smoothly roll away from him, but ended up on the floor. He crawled across the mattress and looked down at her, still covering her ears and squeezing her facial muscles together in a vain effort to ignore him.

"I mean, if she doesn't love me, I can't stay with her, Ashley. I want her to love me. Do you think she loves me? Can you tell?"

They were like that for about fifteen minutes, Ashley's countenance the same as Aiden gazed down at her pathetically. She said nothing and he left. She slept on the floor, woke up at noon and decided to go to school.

Spencer was talking to Patrick in the courtyard when Ashley showed up, having remembered that on Fridays Spencer was free for every lunch period. They were catching up for the first time in a while and he was exactly as awkward as she had expected him to be.

"What did you do for Thanksgiving?"

"Oh, uh, you know, family, dinner, turkey, relatives, family. That kind of thing. I mean, did you eat with your family? Or Aiden—Ashley—Aiden?—maybe, your family. I don't know."

"I ate at Aiden's house. It was delicious. The next day we walked all over town and then we went to the beach."

"I go to the beach sometimes. I mean, I like to, I haven't gone to the beach in a long time because my friends don't do that as much and I used to go with my sisters, and they're gone now. And the beach is pretty nice."

"We can go to the beach sometime, Patrick. We can go with the basketball team, after a game, perhaps."

She made him feel comfortable. They were friends again.

Ashley had stopped to watch from the doorway into the courtyard, perched herself against it casually. The bell rang and she stepped back behind the door as the two walked out. She grabbed Spencer's hand as she began to walk away; she had just stood there and they hadn't seen her.

"Come here," Ashley said. Her voice was raw. She'd smoked too many cigarettes.

The two gravitated back to the tree and Ashley pulled Spencer onto the bench, making erratic motions with their entwined hands as she spoke.

"We have joints to roll, lots of them, and I drew these pictures and I want to show you them, and we'll need to finish the rest of my Southern Comfort," she mumbled, creating multiple tangents as she continued. "So we'll have to stop by the library, is the gist of it."

"I have class the rest of the day. How about tomorrow, around three?"

"You're horrible! You horrible creature! It's from talking to that scientologist, right? He mixes up your priorities."

"Tsk. He's Catholic, like me, Ashley."

"I want to take you home with me and make you laugh and sweat and scream."

"Sorry? What's wrong with you, now?"

"Nothing. I'm completely sober minus two Vicodin, one line of codeine and three good morning bowls."

"What are you talking about, laughter and sweat and screaming? I've never heard this before."

Ashley leaned in towards Spencer's ear, speaking in a low tone with careful enunciation.

"I'm going to make you my love-bitch," she said. She moved her lips so that they were grazing Spencer's nose, began to kiss her beneath the overhang of the branches.

"Jesus, can't you be a little more subtle? I don't know what's come over you."

"Come to my house with me."

In the car, Spencer asked her again:

"What's wrong with you? Why are you treating me like this?"

"I've decided it is about time I make you my love-bitch. You've always been my bitch, now we're just going to make love all the time. And you're allowed to speak to me now, but only when spoken to. And you cannot break any of the Commandments, which I will improvise right now."

"Don't do that. What if I don't want to make love to you because you're so arrogant and reckless and you act as if you're using me? I don't think I've ever implied that I'm attracted to that."

"All the time."

"I'm not. I want you to be honest with me. Why do you want to do this with me now, after all those objections you had, after being all over the place with me—tease me, talk to me, ignore me, embrace me. What is this, now?"

They pulled up to the Davies mansion. The gates had been fixed.

"Are you in love with Aiden?"

"What business is that of yours?"

Ashley pushed Spencer into the wall of the archway leading into the living room. She ran her eyes and hands down her thoroughly, as if it was the first time she was looking at her or feeling her.

"It's my business," Ashley began, grinding against her and gripping her hips. "Because I think you're in love with me."

They migrated upstairs and Ashley made them drinks, Pineapple Bombs to go with the thick smoke of burning herb and paper.

Spencer was familiar with this daze but the short week away from it had somehow left her feeling overwhelmingly sober. She eased right into the alcohol's fumes and was drunk again, as if she'd never been drunk before. She kept on drinking and she was drunker, she smoked and her eyes were heavy.

The two lost conversational tactics and smothered each other, passionate and clumsy as they bounced between the walls of the empty house. Spencer was drunk enough that she saw two of Ashley until her face was close enough, the only time her features were defined and she could comprehend exactly what was occurring. She didn't think about it; early on in the process she just stopped thinking about everything. She became, rather, a part of a dance, her mind trapped among instinct, her state returned to that of the beastly human being she had previously pondered.

They lay in each other's arms at night, heard the slam of the door downstairs and voices, their friends, filling the space around them.

"I'm going to get changed, and you should smoke a joint so they think we were doing that. Come on, come on. Go put on some clothes," Spencer said. Her words were dry and raspy, the result of a medium-sized hangover, and it was only with considerable difficulty that she was able to compel herself to leave the bed.

"I'm sleeping. Do you love him?"

"No. Get dressed, Ashley."

"He deserves better than you."

"Fuck you!" Spencer threw her jeans in her face. "I stayed with him because you wanted me to."

"I just think he deserves someone who loves him."

"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I hate you."

She stormed out of the room. Ashley sat up a little and realized that she had not dealt with that discussion correctly.

"I mean, if I have you and we love each other, he should find someone who loves him like that," she said, to herself and the light creeping through the half-open door. "And he said it, too, so maybe I could have both of you."

She lit up a cigarette, alone with her vices. Downstairs they yelped and played and she could imagine herself with them, together wreaking havoc on their own minds and sanity. She finished the remainder of her current liquor ensemble in the company of Bob Dylan and her mirror and blades.


	15. Chapter 15

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* * *

They sat around a television that murmured advertisements and manipulation and a light static, inhaling beers as a few blunts made their rotation.

"Shit, all of you wasting your time like usual," Sean remarked. "Where's Ashley? You know she wants in on bullshit wasting time."

"She's somewhere, man, around. Last night I swear she was acting something crazy. It was fucking weird. I hope she's sleeping."

"Yes," Spencer agreed.

"Did you see her today?"

"At school. At school, she gave me a ride here. After school. Then I waited. I watched Kyla's Sex and the City DVD's. And she slept."

"Now that sounds like some good old white bitch fun to me," Sean said.

"It was very white of me," Spencer concluded.

"Kyla gets back tomorrow. Do you think she watched Sex and the City there? I bet she had a lot of sex with her ex-boyfriends. She's always saying that stuff, so I bet she got a lot of that done," Aiden said.

"I'm sure she had a lot of fun." Spencer smiled to herself, feeling gratified that she would be able to see Kyla again after her absence. She glanced around momentarily and took a long swallow from her beer.

Aiden moved his fingers across the skin on her arm and she shivered; he kissed her as he leaned across her to pass the blunt and he watched her flinch at the contact, go still with his touch.

She couldn't remember what she was supposed to do or why and she acknowledged at last that she had come to disdain their interaction and the way his eyes would set on her. Sean quietly watched this unfold under the veil of casual dialogue, gazed at Spencer suspiciously as she abruptly uprooted herself from her seat and went to the bathroom.

He turned to Aiden.

"That girl's got something on you," he advised. "Go take care of your woman."

"I think she's just drunk or something."

"She's looking at you like you're a fuckin' spider or some shit."

"God damnit," Aiden told him. He proceeded down the hallway to the door of the bathroom, where Spencer sat idle, glaring at the tiles.

"Spence?" he asked.

She said nothing.

"Spencer? Is something wrong? It's Aiden," he added, just in case.

"I need to…think," she answered, but with too little volume.

"What?" he yelled.

"I'm thinking."

"Are you mad at me?"

"I'm not mad at you; I'm thinking."

"Listen, I don't know why you're acting kind of different or whatever, but I wish you'd come out, so that you're not mad, and I know we don't really talk about us that much, and we don't have that much sex, but I think that I am ready to talk about things so that we can communicate and have more sex," he offered. He finished his beer and aimed it at a trash can on the other side of the room. He missed. "Shit."

Spencer opened the door.

"I don't think I feel well tonight. Can you give me a ride home, and I'll call you tomorrow?"

"What? Why? You can stay around longer if you like. You know, it's still early, and we have lots more beer and buds and stuff."

"I don't want to hang around tonight. I'll spend time with you tomorrow."

"No, no, Spencer, stay, please stay. I want you to be here."

"I can get a ride with Sean if you don't feel like you can drive. Or even Glen. I can call Glen."

"Spence, stay, you have to stay. I don't want you to leave."

She was walking towards the front door.

"Wait, wait, I'll give you a ride home."

"I'm sorry," Spencer said after remaining silent the entire drive. He kissed her and she turned her face, edged out of her seat. "I'll call you. I'm sorry."

Inside she found Glen watching a program with the lights off, clutching a brew in his right hand. She planted herself beside him and they were like that for a while, enchanted by the moving pictures and eccentric sounds.

"Why are you home tonight? Don't Madison and you usually have sex around this time?" Spencer inquired.

"She's mad at me."

"What did you do?"

"I fucked Sherri."

"Glen!"

He shrugged.

"It was kind of an impulse thing. She'll get over it."

"Sherri was Madison's best friend, Glen. That's not right at all."

"No, it's okay, Spence. I bought her flowers and I'm going to give her a night of riotous sex soon. Besides, who gives a shit about Sherri? I only need one fuckin' freaky bitch, two is too many."

"I don't think it's that easy."

He turned to her, cocking an eyebrow.

"She's going to bitch and moan for a while, but Madison knows how it is."

"How is it, exactly?"

Glen mumbled incomprehensibly.

"Oh?"

"Yes."

"You love her?"

"Hey, give me the remote. What are we watching, anyways? Fucking nothing, that's what."

"You have the remote."

"Touché," Glen said. "Let's pay attention."

"You love Madison and she loves you and you guys will get through you being the biggest dipshit ever as long as you continue to feel all special about each other. That's sweet. Do you have nothing to do when you're not with her, now?"

"Shut up. I do stuff without the Mexican."

"Masturbate?"

Spencer went to sleep after another hour of progressive sibling bonding. She awoke with immediate pressure on her heart, a newly birthed obligation to address the issue of her relationship with Aiden. She would break up with him.

She woke up Clay and asked him to take her to Ashley's. She walked in on her own and glanced around the hollow abode expectantly. Ashley was in her room, standing up in the middle of the floor.

"Ashley?" Spencer asked, because the girl did not appear to notice her entrance.

"Yes?"

"Is Aiden here?"

"No. Come over here, I'd like to show you this angle through my window from where I'm standing. You can see some really interesting bushes. There are no uninteresting bushes from this perspective."

"I need to talk to Aiden."

"Why don't you talk to me instead? But remember the eighth commandment. Only brief phrases that I approve of beforehand are acceptable. I don't want to talk about your emotional problems."

"_Mine_? Come on, do you know where Aiden is?"

"He may or may not be at his own house. It's just a gander, though. What, you're leaving?"

Spencer was, in fact, leaving. She was halfway down the staircase as Ashley wandered out of her bedroom.

"Are you coming back? Because I've decided I could do without you, what with you being so sketchy lately. I mean, you're just walking out on me like that, that's almost something I'd normally be doing to you."

She shut the front door and got back in the car with Clay. He brought her to Aiden's house where she knocked politely on the door. His mother received her, shaking and full of compulsory hosting habits.

He was in his bedroom, sitting up on top of his blankets and sheets as if he had just been sleeping there. His room was small, full of boy things—posters of cars and women, dirty clothes littering the carpet.

"Spencer?" he asked. He squinted, confirming that it was her form he saw. "What is it?"

"Aiden, I wanted to talk to you as soon as possible."

"It's okay. I don't need to talk if you don't want to."

"I do want to. You're great, Aiden, and…" Spencer stopped mid-sentence, noting more closely the stains along his cheekbones. "Were you crying? What happened?"

"Son of a bitch slapped Ma. So Joseph tackled him and Ben and Eddie held his arms back and I got to beat on him, then we started to brawl and he got some good hits on me so that my mouth and nose were bleeding at the end and he fucked up my arm. But I won; I gave him a black eye. He's at the bar."

Spencer internally swore at her lack of timing skills. She could have anticipated this kind of conflict based on his location alone.

"Let me see your arm," Spencer said. She'd forgotten why she was there after a few minutes, was dripping with concern and determined to assess the severity of the situation. Clay and she brought him to the hospital. He'd sprained his wrist, and while they gave him the cast she spoke to her mother in the lobby.

"How'd he do that to himself? He's got bruises all over and he doesn't seem coherent. I hope you're not getting in with a fighting crowd, sweetie. He's handsome, but that doesn't mean he's invincible. You have to make sure he doesn't get into this kind of trouble anymore."

"It's from basketball," Spencer responded dryly. She casually relocated herself to another region of the room. He got out before the evening was over, and Clay drove them to Sean's for Kyla's party.

Spencer embraced Kyla when they reunited. She felt incredibly glad to see her, wanted to ask her all kinds of questions about boys and hormones. Amid the rush of people she only had time to ask her about her Thanksgiving, and then she was in a separate part of the apartment. She began to get drunk. Aiden pulled her onto the dance floor in spite of his injury.

They danced intimately for several minutes until he positioned himself wrong and winced in pain, and she moved them towards the edge of the pit.

"God damnit, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he repeated.

"It's okay," she said, then she looked down. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I don't feel that bad. I'm pretty drugged up, really. This thing isn't very convenient, but it could have been a lot worse." He leaned in to press his lips against hers and she backed into the wall.

"I can't do it," she tried to explain.

"It doesn't hurt my arm to kiss you, silly."

"Aiden, we can't be together. I don't know where this is going and I don't want you to get hurt. It wouldn't be fair."

He stared at her almost expectantly. He was silent.

"I love you, and I care about you, and I wish I could do this with you, but I can't," Spencer continued. "I can't do this with you anymore. I'm sorry. I'm glad we've become friends."

He didn't say anything. He had lost faith in his ability to speak. After a bit, she couldn't look at him anymore, and she compelled herself to leave him there, watching the wall awkwardly. As she left he lowered his gaze to his cast. He was considering fucking up his other arm, too—what could a hole in the wall do for that?

Spencer wandered about the place between various sources of music, seeking no destination in particular. She ran into Ashley when she ventured onto the small balcony next to the kitchen and immediately she was given a goal; the two returned to the bathroom in the lobby where they had gone Homecoming night, observing the tiny space from significantly changed vantage points.

Spencer told her what had happened.

"I broke up with Aiden," she started. "I'm pretty sure I did it for you."

Ashley slid onto the floor and indicated that Spencer should sit beside her. When she did she wrapped a loose arm around her shoulders and cradled her head in her hand, against her shoulders. She was stroking the delicate wrinkles in Spencer's forehead, sweeping hair from her eyes.

"I'm glad you did," she said.

"I don't know why I'd do it for you, because you're so confusing and horrible and you make everything a lot more difficult for me. But I don't know who else I'd do it for."

"You could have been doing it for him."

"I guess that was a lot of it. I still feel close to him, I just can't touch him anymore."

"You don't have to. You're free."

"Free from what? I don't know if I feel any freer. I think it'd make much more of a difference if I broke it off with someone like you, who actually exerts control over me. That would make me feel free."

"It frees you to stop lying to yourself, and other people."

Spencer looked up at Ashley. She was staring down at her, her fingers still tracing her features absently.

"Why do you have so much sympathy?"

"I wanted you to break up with him."

"Why now?"

"He told me he wanted someone who could love him back. At first I thought you could, and then he could be happy like he thought he would be, and everything would go all right. When he had you to escape to, he didn't have to do so many other things to himself. But why should he build his contentment on a shitty liar? He shouldn't. And in any case, I've chosen you as my love-bitch, which would create a conflict of interest otherwise."

"I don't know how I'm supposed to tell him that one. This is the worst situation ever."

"Don't worry about that right now."

They sat like that for some time longer, each lost in separate realms of speculation.

"I suppose I do feel a little freer," Spencer said at one point. She relaxed her body and spread her arms and laid her head in Ashley's lap. They enjoyed a joint together, and their tiny bathroom cell flew them everywhere they wanted to go. Among thick smoke and a heavy night they embraced this little flash of freedom, welcomed the momentary lapse in all their compulsions and duties and restraints—liberty on the dirty tile floors of a lower middle class American residential building.

Aiden had carried himself to the porch after he had finished staring at the wall for a sufficient amount of time, arriving shortly after Ashley left with Spencer. Sean, who had been keeping meticulous track of this sequence of events, pursued him.

"Did that girl leave you?"

He couldn't talk, so he didn't.

"It's all right, brother. You know you got game. When you find another girl you like, she's yours. Your bitch ass tries again."

"My bitch ass tries again." Aiden located his vocal box in the very back of his head.

"Damn right."

"Bitch ass gotta try again…"

"Go binge drink, you damn fool. I got some kegs left in there."

"I thought we could stay together. I was so excited. I loved having her to rely on, and she was so beautiful."

"Chill out. Next week you go pick up some bitch, and don't get your ass all wound up and stay cool."

Aiden went inside and poured himself his next beer.


	16. Chapter 16

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* * *

The following morning, Spencer, Kyla, and Ashley found themselves wasting their hangovers at the beach, flaunting their bikinis to an assortment of like-minded teenagers and small children.

Ashley was wandering up the sandy slope as noon broke, facing the sun so that she had to squint to make out the bathroom facility in the distance. She kept her bag in her top and was quite comfortable with the public lavatory setting. Thus, this ascent was a walk of anticipation, and she tasted the cocaine on her tongue before she'd even broken it out.

When the light became hidden behind the building she was approaching, Ashley determined that it was the appropriate time to mentally undress the other beach-goers. Sunday afternoon girls were tan and pretty, took good care of their appearances and liked to put out. It was the kind of opportunity she'd feed off of if her instinct had been working, and Ashley retrieved from the back of her brain the thought process courting a girl would require. There was a certain familiarity to it until she had actually walked up to one, in which case she suddenly felt upset.

Ashley did not know how to address the conflicting emotions. She had already begun to flirt with her.

"There's a mansion, but I have a strict entrance-upon-strip-dance-only policy," she explained to what had become a small group of girls, then paused to decide whether it made sense. "Right. You'll have to perform a high-quality strip dance."

They giggled the appropriate amount, then proceeded to provide her with hopelessly generic responses. Ashley lost interest, returned her eyes to the shore where her sister sat with Spencer. They were idle from what she observed then, each gazing across the stretches of blue at the thin horizon.

Abandoning her attempt at nostalgia, she glanced back at the bathroom door and pushed past her acquaintances. She was hastily unwrapping a gram, then cutting it up shamelessly on top of the toilet. She was rolling the bill when the door swung open and the sound of footsteps echoed off the walls.

Ashley began to panic, then she began to think. She could either flush it or quickly cut up a fatty and take it all at once before they saw it. She fumbled with the Benjamin then shakily lowered her face, her fingers danced on the edge of the makeshift straw. A deep breath—

Ashley blew the line. The white powder split up across the white surface, settled like a dust cloud on the tile floor. A chain of swear words, and behind her the clamor persisted as the girls from outside reapplied make-up. She burst out the stall door, sniffing anxiously as if her plans had gone correctly, then disappeared. She descended the hill at a jog.

Below, Spencer was finally talking to Kyla. The two were feeling pleasant, enjoying friendly company and speaking with a freedom they had lacked without each other.

"He sprained his wrist, so we took him to the hospital, and my mom lectured me. I broke up with him at your party."

"Okay, Spence, total foul. You can't break up with an injured boy until he's had some time to finish pouting."

"I don't know, Kyla," said Spencer, and waited for an elaboration to come to her. "I don't know."

"So what happened?"

"What do you mean?

"I mean, why did you have to break up with him?"

Spencer frowned, matched her vision with the ground.

"I couldn't keep on doing it. By the end of it, I couldn't even look at him any more. I'd just see…nothing. Shame."

Kyla studied her carefully. She cocked a skeptical eyebrow.

"Why _shame_?"

"Touching him and talking to him and pretending I understood what we were doing or why. He'd say these things to me, describe these feelings, and Lord, he's always so _drunk_, Kyla. He drinks too much. And he's so incredibly…"

Kyla was the first to notice Ashley attempting to half-run awkwardly down the shoreline. She nudged her companion mid-sentence, interrupting the downpour of words.

"Sad," Spencer concluded. She cut off. Ashley tripped a few feet away, recovered, and darted over to them, panting.

"I need a smoke," she stated. She circled a little and placed herself between Kyla and Spencer, sparked one up as the waves tickled the soles of her feet. "Let me tell you what's fucking sad. This girl didn't get laid once on her journey back to Merry-land."

"That's cute. Mary, merry. I mean, I think it works," Kyla said. She adjusted her position and directed her attention away from the ensuing conversation

"She even went and found one of her old bitches, but then she didn't get laid anyways. Fucking sad. That one was David, or Alex, maybe…"

"Daniel."

"Right, right."

"He was your boyfriend…freshman year?" Spencer asked, now curious. In her mind she examined her vast knowledge of her friend's sporadic dating history.

"Beginning of sophomore year. We went out for four months," Kyla said, agitated by Ashley's antics. "And I wasn't going there to get laid. I didn't think we were going to."

"So you went and visited him?" Spencer asked, clarifying something she was just now hearing.

"I hadn't seen him since the party before I left. We'd been dancing that night. He looks different though. He kind of grew a beard, or something."

"Did it look nice?"

"He looked cute. He's going to a college in the state, and he has a girlfriend. His mother didn't remember me at first." Kyla shrugged, as if considering it all in passing. "It was good to go back and see someone like that, though. Old friends."

Spencer nodded slowly. For the remainder of daylight the three enjoyed the sand against their backs and the heat on their shoulders, up until the sky tinted gray and rain speckled their towels and the tips of their noses and knees. By the time the car was on the road a warm shower had engulfed the vessel and the lightning sparked beyond them as fast, ruthless city time reinstated itself.

About an hour later at the opposite end of Los Angeles, Aiden was awaking in Sean's apartment. He was on the carpeted floor of the main bedroom, his head pounding against the sweaty lump of his shirt, which he had resourcefully used as a pillow.

Almost immediately he was overwhelmed with a barrage of images and memories. Spencer had broken up with him. Thereafter he had done several keg stands and God, what was this aching pain?

He rolled over a bit and it shot through him abruptly. He produced a low, sickly groan. His handicapped wrist had clearly been manhandled, and on his other hand he could feel bruises along his knuckles. He had hit something.

"I hope you're getting up so you can start scrubbing my bathroom wall. Normal sons of a bitch don't sucker punch a kid 'cause they take a long time to piss, but your dumb ass has it covered, your fuckin' son of a bitch dumb ass…"

He had hit someone. This was of little concern, however, because the only thing he could register was feeling tremendously sore.

"Sorry," Aiden told Sean once he had reluctantly climbed to his feet. He was genuine but distracted.

"What? You gotta look pitiful now? I don't care if you only got one hand, you're cleaning that shit up before it dries on. The rag and shit's in the kitchen."

The blood started in a deep red blot along the wooden frame of the doorway, trailing downwards for roughly seven inches and extending on several tangents. The rest of the stain was a pale pinkish color that might have matched the wallpaper in the hallway if it were taken out of context.

Aiden started cleaning slowly and drowsily, lazily rubbing the consequences of the previous night from visibility. The symbol, to him, was one he barely connected with himself, a distant reaction of a character that was his own only by association.

Because his mind would not empty itself, Aiden's countenance amid this job alternated rapidly between being close to tears and grimacing so as to repress a scream of frustration.

Why had she broken up with him? What had he done? He tried with difficulty to remember the conversation that had preceded it, but could recall only her expression, downcast, as they watched each other at the end. A pulse in his temple throbbed hysterically.

After a few minutes he was no longer paying attention to his progress with the blood, instead rubbing frantically at the spot and facing his lap. His eyes were squeezed closed and his expression was distorted. Sean walked up behind him and slapped him on the back, gently yanked the rag from his grip.

"You're finished. I got some people over. Come chill out."

Aiden followed him to the living room where Glen was smoking a blunt in the recliner. On the couch, Clay and Chelsea were attached to each other, suspended casually across the right half of the seat and the armrest.

Aiden was sniffling a little. He had started to cry again, and he realized it when he wiped his eyes. He tilted his head and fell into the closest chair, feeling hollow.

"What's wrong with the big pussy? You're lucky I've talked to my sister today, or I'd be thinking you forgot to give her a ride home last night," Glen said, taking a sizable drag off the blunt.

"Shut up," Sean said. He gave Glen a meaningful look that he failed to comprehend.

"What? Hey, Aiden, I heard you punched Patty last night. Why the hell would you punch Patty? Patty don't do shit to nobody. He just comes to Sean's nice little get-together, trying to have a good time with the team, and you smack the dude."

"Little Patrick?" Aiden said. He saw Patrick staring up at him from the ground, blood streaking down from his nose, and cringed deeply.

Clay sat up a bit, looking disapprovingly at his stepbrother before speaking to Aiden.

"Something happen last night? You look like a wreck. Do you need a ride home? To Ashley's?"

"Spencer and I broke up."

"'Cause you're a bitch—really?" Glen had his response pre-formulated. The addendum, a well-meaning and quiet remark by contrast, was necessary to demonstrate his surprise at what Aiden actually ended up saying.

Clay and Chelsea had sufficient compassion to offer. Aiden doused himself in the pity and sulked pointedly.

"Hm. Well, that's something," said Glen when he had a chance to comment between the dialogue of apologetic sentiments. "Good thing you punched Patty, then. He for sure tries to mack on her."

"Shit, Glen."

"Come on, man, suck it up. Madison and I are broken up, and you don't see me all throwing a fit like that."

"Madison and you are going to get back together! That's not fair."

"I'm just saying," Glen continued. "You could use some balls. It'd make you feel better."

"Man, shut the fuck up. What's wrong with you?" Sean was examining a new tear in the leather on the edge of the recliner. He glanced up to address Glen. "Take the brother clubbing tonight. Stop being such a fucking prick."

That's why the two were standing in line together at a night club downtown, exchanging weak, ambiguous glares in the shade of the evening. They could see no stars and the breeze was light but consistent, ruffling periodically the thick palm branches that hung over them.

They got inside and simultaneously began slamming drinks at the bar. The circumstances were strange enough that each felt as if they were alone until they'd become somewhat inebriated. At that point, they realized they could speak with each other. Relevant discussion piqued.

"What about that hottie? With the slip? You know she likes her men blond, and she's dancing all sexy like that," Glen directed Aiden's gaze to the main floor. He had significantly better of an attitude for accomplishing the task, and was already seriously considering his options.

Aiden, on the other hand, was sliding back into the emotional drunkenness of the previous night, and did not consider himself in the condition to attract and bed a female. He felt irreconcilably tired, a dull ache of lethargy and depression weighing on his actions and behavior.

"Whatever the hell you want, man," he told Glen. He gulped down the rest of his drink.

"That's it?"

"I'm going to drink some more. Don't forget your fucking tab."

"Seriously, Dennison? This is weak. Look, hottie's got a friend. What do you think of that ass, buddy?"

"What ass?" Aiden asked, focusing his vision intently on said ass. Skimming the girl's body he sat back and nodded. "I would fuck her."

"Let's go."

"Fuck no. I'm drinking."

"You said you'd fuck her, didn't you?"

The song ended and the muscles of the crowd relaxed. The two women acknowledged their attention. Aiden stared at the taller one, watched her lips seduce him with a twitch, was captivated by a gaze that darted around his being absently.

He remembered lust, the empty kind, and wanted to embrace it for all its perseverance and _purity_—it seemed so much simpler than what he'd seen of love and beauty. Moved by alcohol, an apt soundtrack, and an incorrigible sex drive he recognized from several months prior, Aiden became a part of the ritual, sweating and moving to the beats of his partner's heart.

Glen and Aiden followed the girls to an apartment and had loud sex across the hall from each other. For pieces of moments they even seemed to be in sync, and at seven in the morning Glen drove Aiden back to his house, so that they would not have to experience the wake-up part.

Aiden crept through his abode, not wanting to disturb anyone, and collapsed, exhausted on his sheets. Finally, he thought. Finally what? He asked his ceiling fan, then the oak posts on his bed, layered with engraved patterns.

Neither inanimate object answered, but he obviously knew without them. Aiden sobbed into his pillow and by noon he had fallen asleep. He dreamt; he was flying, shooting through human space like a rocket. In his wake he uprooted trees, shrubbery, and when he dove into the mass of stars it was a curtain, blinding him and pulling apart the binding of the world.

It was sweeter to sleep in tears than in sweat or vomit. The morning smelled like roses.


	17. Chapter 17

Look, I have another chapter for you. Sorry about the wait and I hope you enjoy. Reviews are appreciated.

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Ashley couldn't remember the last time she'd woken up before eight. The sunlight that crept through her blinds during that part of the morning was something she was unfamiliar with, even intimidated by. She groaned and held on tight to her bed sheets, reluctant to respond to the unexpected obligation of arriving at school on time.

There was all kinds of commotion occurring that made ignoring it difficult. There were footsteps in her hallway, before she heard the rapid knocking on the door there was conversation, Kyla and Spencer talking about school and boys and who was going to drive. Ashley wanted nothing to do with this clamor, automatically concerned upon consciousness with the drug room upstairs.

When was the last time she'd broken out the white girl? Had it been a few days, a week? Holes in her brain prevented her from clarifying until she bitterly recalled that the last time she'd seen her cocaine it had been strewn across a dirty restroom floor, and somehow she hadn't dealt with the stress of that incident by cutting up some more as soon as she got home. What could she possibly have been doing all night?

"How does she expect to leave this late with the traffic around here? This is ridiculous." Spencer's voice was accompanied by the click of a turning knob. Ashley covered her face with a pillow so as to avoid looking at the stern expression inevitably drawn on her face, but this was to no avail. She could still see it on her eyelids, an angry slideshow urging her to attempt to do something at that ungodly hour.

"I don't think you guys have the same schedules," Kyla offered. The two were now standing anxiously in Ashley's bedroom. She found their presence exceedingly uncomfortable, weighing down disagreeably on her inclination to stay beneath her blanket and idle.

"We have science together second period," Spencer said, misinterpreting Kyla's wording.

"Does she show up?"

Spencer tapped her chin thoughtfully.

"Occasionally. But I always figure she's not there because she's off smoking in some random part of the school, not because she's asleep. The teacher isn't very nice to her, either, so she probably just prefers not to be there."

"Most teachers don't like Ashley."

"I think it's kind of like a cycle. Maybe they wouldn't antagonize her if she showed up on time, then she'd want to be there on time."

"God damnit, I'm right here. Shut up. Teachers don't like me because they want my ass," Ashley interjected. Her words were muffled because of the pillow, so she removed it and repeated herself. "Right. All the teachers want to do me, but I don't like any of them because I can't bring myself to respect their shitty careers and general lack of social skills."

"Finally! Come on, get your shit together. You have to drive us today. Brian's picking me up after school. And Spencer wants to arrive _on time_, if you're even capable of that."

Ashley spent some time mumbling unintelligibly before acquiescing to their implausible plans.

"Fine. I have to put on some pants, though, Jesus…"

"We're going to be in the car. Hurry up."

"If you want, I can go to school indecent. I don't think anyone would mind."

Kyla rolled her eyes and exited the scene agitated. Spencer stood for a moment in the doorway watching Ashley slowly sit up and rub her eyes. Blinking lazily, she turned to her and grinned.

"Now I _know_ you'd like a show. Or at least some pre-game."

Spencer glanced at her watch.

"It's 7:30. I'd say you have about five minutes. It is in your best interest to actually get dressed."

At this rejection Ashley looked indignant and offended, but when Spencer left a few seconds later she frowned and sighed and went about doing unpleasant morning things.

Among the unpleasant morning rush Ashley found herself feeling different in light of the circumstances. She was only set back a few hours, but the sore combination of relative sobriety and mild colors struck her. For a bit she joked to herself about being a child again, with her mother or the chauffeur at the wheel and her reactions not yet numb to the stigma of being so inadequate of a student. Briefly she glanced in her rear view mirror and examined the shadows below her eyes. Something in her mind told her she'd seen them before plenty of times, yet she felt as if it were the first time she'd actually noticed them.

"So what exactly did you do over Thanksgiving, Ashley? Did you get to have a jolly old time with Christine?" Kyla's voice disrupted her reverie and she forced herself with effort to supply a response. She wasn't sure.

"Jolly old time indeed," she started, considering what else she knew happened over break. Her vision shifted to the back seat where Spencer sat and she realized that she wasn't in the position to describe the significant aspects of her vacation to Kyla. "You know, there were parties and stuff. You know, like, house parties, and gay bars…"

She looked at the mirror again and watched Spencer cock an eyebrow at the remark. She had circles beneath her eyes, too, more evident because of her lighter complexion. The traffic began to inch forward and move and she returned her gaze to the road. At first daybreak had just confused her, now she felt a sullen anger towards it. The woman in the car to the left of her was smoking what she detected to be a stale blunt and the stereo of the van in front of her preached sex, violence, and reckless money expenditure. She wanted to blame all the lost youth she constantly saw on these shitty Monday mornings.

"Pff. You should really try mixing it up a little. I went to karaoke with Jimmy and his little friends in Baltimore, and that was refreshing. Do you want to go to karaoke, maybe, Ashley?"

Because of its contrast with her previous contemplations, this idea delighted Ashley. She responded with unprecedented enthusiasm, allowing herself to be pleased with the change of subject.

"Yes! And Spencer is going to sing Bohemian Rhapsody."

"What?" Spencer asked, unaware that these intentions existed.

"Sure," Kyla said, eyeing her sister's expression carefully as they passed King High. "Wait, drop us off here. You can be late every fucking day, we can't."

"You don't want to help me find parking? I always like it best when I get here around lunchtime, because people are always going to lunch and shit."

Kyla had already gone to greet some friends. Behind her Spencer was posted at the door handle, prepared to jump out of the vehicle at the optimal moment.

"Look at that, Ashley. We're three minutes early."

"Hold on, hold on. That means you owe me. You owe me a fucking latte."

"Really? Is that what that means?"

"Yeah. You're buying me a latte after school."

"Thanks for the ride. I'll get you a latte."

Ashley circled the surrounding area for a while. She felt an unusual sense of pride at having still been capable of fulfilling such obligations, but this diminished as she exhausted the train of thought and realized that she was late anyways. Having not located any available spaces that were sufficiently close to her initial destination, she took a detour to the nearby liquor store, around which there were consistently open parking spots.

Because she was by the liquor store, Ashley felt compelled to think about alcohol and buying and drinking it. She didn't need alcohol at home, so if she got something it'd be for enjoying throughout the next two or three days. Then she'd have to think about when to drink it, and with whom. Ashley decided on a fifth of spiced rum, and from there she determined that she could start drinking it immediately after purchasing it. She would call Aiden, and if Aiden couldn't drink with her then Ashley would drink with herself. Unfortunately, she happened to know that that location didn't open until 10:30, and though she was aware of other stores that would be able to sell to her this early, she opted to smoke a joint in an alley instead.

This was all executed without any apparent indication that her state of mind had changed; perhaps in the heat of the action she was even thinking the same things that disturbed her on the drive to school—quietly scrutinizing the unkempt appearance of a lower middle class neighborhood, the tumult of a couple arguing on a porch above her in the language of the undereducated, or the vandalism that lined the otherwise barren walls of the buildings against which she leaned. She was a part of it all, the misguided adolescent smoking marijuana among trash and the occasional transient panhandler, but such a realization was like the circles under her eyes to her: something she tended to forget in the process of acknowledgment.

Because Aiden didn't pick up, she wasted several hours loitering in this fashion, then wasted several more taking a walk with her bottle after having gotten it. A few swigs and then she was back in the car, newly rejuvenated in a way that would allow her to enjoy doing nothing. She found herself casually touring the underbelly of Los Angeles, chain-smoking and looking ironically at the city's broad array of citizens engaging in their typical daytime activities. At random intervals she would consider returning to her house to snort a line or two, but she wanted to stay in the area so that she could make Spencer buy her a latte as soon as class let out.

This aspect of Ashley's plans repeatedly came back to her, so she was early getting back there and more practical about locating herself near campus. For about fifteen minutes she sipped a rum and coke she'd crafted on the way, pouring out what was left when she could see kids filtering outside from assorted outlets. She hopped out of the car and lit up another cigarette, presumably to chase the alcohol, then waved flamboyantly when she identified Spencer at the other end of the street.

Spencer was alone. She approached Ashley cautiously after seeing her eccentric hand signals, squinted suspiciously at her good humor and timeliness.

"Are you coked up or something?" she asked. She had difficulty telling the difference between Ashley's various states of intoxication.

"Nay, matey! I've got the Captain in me. See, check my pupils. And check out this airflow," Ashley said, feeling a pride akin to that which she'd experienced seven hours ago, pulling up by the main entrance. She pulled down the skin below one of her eyes accordingly, covered her left nostril and blew. She sniffed a little, congested despite having deprived herself for a day and a half. "Hold on, I can get it. Sometimes my nose gets a great rip."

"So…you got here, most likely earlier than you've been the entire year, and then you didn't show up for any of your classes so that you could get drunk?"

Ashley deflated.

"I suppose that's what happened. But more importantly, you made me drive you two all the way here so I could drink, and you still haven't bought me caffeine."

"I didn't make you drive us here so you could drink. What if I think you're trashed, and I don't want to be in a car driven by someone this drunk? I might have to find another ride, and I don't know if they'd want to stop just to pick you up a cappuccino."

"Latte. Cappuccinos are mostly foam."

"Sounds even less probable."

"I'm having you buy me a latte if it's the last thing I do! Get in the car, punk," Ashley demanded. She pointed emphatically at the passenger seat then folded her arms for effect.

"Come on, you can do better than that."

"Fine, I'll list the alphabet backwards. While walking in a straight line. With my finger on my nose."

"You're making me nervous, making promises like that."

"Let's walk. No, I'll carry you. That way you won't break your legs."

"I'd like to walk. Where are we going?"

Ashley glanced around quickly. Seeing as she had just driven aimlessly around that area for a significant period of time and seen most of the things in walking vicinity, she felt like she should have been well-prepared for such a question. However, she hadn't seriously thought about it until that moment, so she went with the first idea that came to mind that she figured would make Spencer uncomfortable.

"The gay coffee shop three blocks down," she declared, grabbing Spencer's hand and guiding her in that direction. "I suspect you've never been to a gay coffee shop before, but there are special rules."

"Um."

"For example, you have to be wearing a hat. And a dog collar. So we'll pick those up on the way."

"Where will we do that?"

"And you'll have to go shirtless. There are pawn shops around here, so we'll sell your shirt at one of those so you can afford the hat, dog collar, and latte. Oh, and the parrot. We need to bring a parrot, or they won't let us in," Ashley explained. She loosened her grip on Spencer's hand and entwined their fingers, slowed their pace as they ambled down the sidewalk. "We'll steal the parrot from another gay coffee shop customer. Some of them have like five."

For the length of the walk Ashley used irrelevant banter and preposterous scenarios to entertain Spencer and herself, strengthened by the clumsy wit that came with alcohol. Spencer was content—she was smiling, listening with an expression halfway between curious and incredulous, but primarily following a separate train of thought; she liked the calm demeanor of the conversation and having Ashley's hand in hers for an extended period of time, soft skin and calloused fingertips. Consequently, she was pondering the latter detail when they arrived and she was standing at the counter waiting on their drinks.

"Did you see any parrots while you were in there? If we could get a parrot, and you could take your shirt off, then we'd be able to sit inside, too," Ashley continued. They were at a table on the edge of the terrace out front. This was reasonable because the weather had become quite pleasant, warm with a hint of a breeze that seemed to attract many other customers outdoors as well.

"Do you play an instrument, Ashley? Did your Dad ever teach you anything?"

"I can do a mean harmonica."

"That's it?"

"Nope."

"Did he teach you the harmonica? What else can you play?"

Ashley scratched her chin thoughtfully.

"You know. Piano, guitar. I could do bass and acoustic, but I preferred electric."

"How come you never play for us? Where are your guitars?"

"I said I _could_ do those things. At one point. I stashed them because people used to steal things like that when I'd have parties, then I just didn't end up ever taking them back out. Then when I tried again, it was too difficult for me. It was like I lost touch or something. I can still do piano okay, because no one ever stole the piano so I never had to stash it, but I've forgotten most of the advanced stuff," Ashley said. She spoke the words with a regularity that implied she'd had to explain it before, and a matter-of-fact tone that didn't seem to capture the effect this had actually had on her. "Dad used to show me stuff when I was little, but I only got to play with him a few times when I was good."

"You should start playing again, and practicing when you're sober. And then you can play me a song, right? Will you show me your guitars some time?" Spencer was grinning. She sat back, satisfied with the challenge and reluctant to acknowledge the flaws in its foundation.

"What? You think I just play songs for any ho?"

"I'm your _love-bitch_."

"You better read that job description if you think that warrants you a song. I don't think I ever put that in the Commandments."

"Come on, I'll let you drive me back to your house if we can do it right now. Just don't drink anymore."

"Don't drink anymore latte? You think I should switch back to Captain?"

"No, don't drink anymore alcohol and take me back to your house so you can show me."

"You think you have persuasive skills! I spit in your persuasive skills' face."

In spite of this proclamation, Spencer was soon following Ashley through the butler's pantry in back into a separate part of the basement. The staircase was hand-crafted wood, loose in some places but sufficiently stable for its purposes and the entire place was dark until Ashley turned on a light across the room, dimly illuminating the colorful space.

The environment was comfortable with couches and blankets and elaborate decorations along the walls, most of which were associated with Raife Davies. Several guitars were propped up beside the stairwell, and it was from these that Ashley selected an acoustic guitar and sat down beside Spencer on one of the chairs.

"Do you know what you're going to play?"

Ashley frowned, fumbling with the tuning as they spoke.

"Nope."

"But you're thinking about it?"

Ashley paused for a moment here to make sure she was in fact thinking about it, but realized that her mind was drawing a blank. She couldn't remember which songs she was still capable of playing, only the songs that she had once loved to play then slaughtered at some point or another. Her palms were sweaty and ever since she had gotten home she had been thinking mostly about coke. She looked over at Spencer, then down at her guitar, moving her fingers along the strings experimentally.

"I don't know. I mean, I'm trying to."

"Did you ever write your own music?"

"There was a time…"

"How'd that turn out?"

"At first I just wrote lyrics, then I figured out how to start playing my own music. Before I stopped, that was mostly what I was into doing."

"And you haven't done that all since…do you know how long?"

Ashley shrugged. She did not.

Spencer stared at Ashley for a while, who was still playing absently but soundlessly with the instrument in her hands.

"Listen. Relax," she said. "Just play whatever comes to your head. Whatever melody you're thinking. I don't care if it sounds horrible."

"I don't know about that."

"You're already down here. You can't turn back now."

"I could put this away and go upstairs and you know, leave."

"Play me a love song. Whatever you play will be good."

"Man, you are so lame," Ashley said. Spencer gazed at her expectantly. "Fine. Okay. Fine."

"Right. Go ahead."

Ashley closed her eyes and used all her willpower to take herself back to playing the guitar as a young child, as a thirteen-year-old, she kept going forward until it had been a few weeks since her father had died and she was playing him love songs drenched in grief. The result was simple but meaningful because of the emotions she attached to music, slow and subtle and a little off at points as if she couldn't help it. She strummed each chord delicately and with painful deliberation, and soon the notes filled the room and blended in among the vibrant images and the shadows in the corners, a symphony of sound fulfilling itself as if it had been born to do so ages ago.


	18. Chapter 18

Here is another chapter. Please read and enjoy, and feel free to provide constructive criticism, in which case you could explain with however much detail is appropriate anything you think could help me improve the story or my writing.

I do not own South of Nowhere.

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Ashley's eyes were still closed when her phone started ringing, matching the pitch of the notes she played as she jumped and her fingers skirted across the strings. Spencer had relaxed into the couch throughout the serenade, and at the interruption she steadily lifted her gaze to survey the ensuing conversation.

"What up, bitch? Would you like a shot of rum?" Ashley said to someone on the other line. "Fucking right. I'll meet you in the living room."

Ashley stood up, stored the guitar, and abruptly began to ascend the staircase.

"Get that light."

"Is someone here?" Spencer asked, tailing Ashley to the front of the house. They reached the main hallway where the door was opening. It was Aiden, who had emerged from the entrance triumphantly with a bottle of Grey Goose and Glen close behind him.

"What the hell are you doing hanging out with _this _dude? You said vodka on the rocks, not basketball practice," Ashley stated, folding her arms and eyeing the pair. This was the question Spencer would have asked had she ever felt the urge to word a sentence that way. She rarely saw the two together unless they were engaging in petty verbal abuse, let alone enduring an entire car ride alone with each other.

"Spencer, what the hell are _you_ doing hanging out with this dude?" Glen retorted. Spencer was over there fairly often and Ashley wasn't a dude, so it was a poor defense.

Meanwhile, Aiden was glancing anxiously in Spencer's direction. She noticed and looked back at him, trying to gauge his condition since the last time she saw him. His arm was still in a cast, and his expression told her that he was uncomfortable being in her presence.

"I'm, you know," Aiden began, trying to answer what was in fact a rhetorical question. "I'm drinking vodka!" Then he lifted the bottle into the air again, trying to regain the confidence he had lost by seeing Spencer.

"Oh, okay. We outta break out the hookah, that's what I think."

"I notice that every time we try to bring that thing somewhere else in the house, we end up just staying in the loft because we can't figure out how to get it through the door," Spencer remarked. The little room was stuffy and remote, positioned just down the hall from Ashley's coke room. She was reluctant to be stuck in there, especially if the situation became awkward.

"Ha! Bullshit. If it didn't fit, then how the hell would we have gotten it in there in the first place?" Ashley countered while they climbed the flights of stairs that would lead them there.

"Right. See, you say that sometimes, but I think you might want to try dissembling it or something first."

They may have attempted this had they not packed a bowl and hit it first, but a plan that required that level of cognition was not practical in the stoned daze that existed afterwards. As a result they indeed found themselves condemned to the loft, determined to smoke it until they were breathing ash.

Spencer started coughing about halfway through this process and handed her hose to Ashley, who opted to hit both of the hoses at once. At some point they were all coughing. This was a terrible place for four people to be engaging in such a loud, extravagant action because of the area's size, so this placed the unlikely group in awkward proximity of one another.

Aiden had made a point not to sit next to Spencer, which was essentially unsuccessful in that he had to sit across from her instead. He had to look everywhere in the room but forward, and when he looked forward he had to immediately look down, so he could take a shot. It was evident after about an hour of idle conversation and compulsive substance abuse that this routine had gotten him wasted.

"My God, Ashley, where'd all the Goose go? It's gone! Did you see this? Glen, did you drink it? I bet you drank it, Ash, but man, you could have told me if you were going to drain it."

"I had a little, big guy, but I think it's pretty obvious who the real culprit is," Ashley said. She found Aiden sufficiently humorous when he produced such displays, and enjoyed playing into them when appropriate.

Aiden's face convulsed in horror as he turned his gaze to Spencer, completely sidestepping the actual implications of Ashley's comment.

"Why would you _do_ that to someone?"

"Um," Spencer glanced around, seeking support from the other two. They had taken this opportunity to have a bowl to themselves, ignoring the despair of their comrades. Ironically enough, she had not had anything to drink.

Aiden sighed when she didn't answer, locked eyes with the bottom of his bottle.

"It's okay you drank it all. Whatever. I mean, usually people ask and stuff, but sometimes I get thirsty too and then I walk to the kitchen at the party and I start drinking stuff people left around, just like, you know, if you didn't drink it fast enough, then why shouldn't I just drink all of it for you, and maybe, also, you shouldn't leave your liquor on the counter, half-full, and there are cups somewhere in this kitchen and I can probably even mix a drink, unless I spill it. Then I give up and drink it straight, and one time I found a pack of Camel Lights and a twelve-pack…" he trailed off here, as if he hadn't been aware he was still talking.

"Is it possible you drank it, Aiden?" Spencer asked, knowing that it was not only possible but blatantly obvious.

Aiden thought for a moment, considering the proposal with some effort. The same image re-appeared in his mind several times, in which he would pick the bottle up, pour the vodka, stop before it spilled, that same procedure right before he downed it, and always that same burn and the inevitable grimace that would manifest itself on his face before he shook it off. How many times had he done that since he got to Ashley's? He started counting, remembering the individual instances he'd seen Spencer doing one thing and had to respond in that fashion.

By the time he had reached eleven, he stopped and blushed a deep red. He felt completely humiliated.

"That's a nice story, Aiden. What was in the twelve-pack?" Ashley asked. They had finished with the hookah and she had sensed his reaction approaching before he had.

"Well, it was full, and it had twelve beers in it. Natty Light. No! Natty Ice…wait, it was Natty Light, but then once I found a full Natty Ice on top of a refridge…rator," he continued, still ashamed but gradually becoming distracted by Ashley's prompt.

"Shit, dude, one time I found a nug of kine on a table. It was the hairiest nug I'd ever seen. Man, I wanted to name it and put it in an aquarium," Glen added, catching on to the nature of the discussion.

"At Sean's party for Kyla, I saw a guy with baggy pants stuff like five beers in his pockets and leave," Spencer tried. This would have been adequate to contribute to the consolation process, except that hearing her talk and mention that event made Aiden want to drink, which reminded him that all his vodka was gone and he'd just embarrassed himself. He retreated to his former hysteria.

"Man, this bottle is empty…look at this, Ashley, why would this happen? Shit, I need a square, or something, fucking no Grey Goose left…"

Spencer frowned, disappointed that she'd upset him again and unsure how to positively influence the situation.

"Ashley, do you think we could go downstairs to do the cigarette thing? I mean, it tends to get pretty smoky in here."

"My God! I'm sorry. We can smoke in Glen's car, or on a porch. Or out a window! Or out the window of Glen's car. Do you have any cigarillos, Glen? I could beast one of those bitches right now. I'm sorry, Spencer, see, I won't make it cloudy."

Spencer had not intended to elicit this reply, thus immediately regretted her suggestion in spite of her desire to leave the enclosed space. Beside her, Ashley prepared to leave, high enough at that point that she was doing so with some difficulty, picking things up then setting them back down then remembering something else but forgetting, and having to stare into space until she could bring the thought back.

"Hey, it's cool, it won't get bad downstairs. And it's pretty nice out, if you guys want to go out back or some shit like that," she said as she hopped out of the loft. Aiden followed last, still clutching the bottle as if it could retain its value even after he'd drank it all.

They got outside and he was fidgeting. Ashley brought them each beers and placed herself in a lawn chair, allowing her body to relax against the warm evening air. Aiden and Glen lit up cigars, and Spencer posted herself awkwardly near the doorway, trying solemnly to identify a star in a sky that had been deprived of them.

"There's Venus," she said.

"Shit, Glen, I need a fuckin' nap, or maybe a bar. You got some, Ash? I gotta ditch, and a couple bars always makes me sleep right sound and shit."

"Damn right you need a nap, you fucking drunkard. I have to go back to the crib and get all good-looking anyways, so you crash on my couch and sober the fuck up."

"You guys are leaving?" Ashley said, reluctantly removing herself from her reclined position and standing up to say goodbye to them.

"You know this dude needs to get out of here and calm down. Thanks for the smoke out, Ashley, that was straight. Are you driving my sister home?"

"I'll call her a taxi. I don't want her messing up the leather." Glen narrowed his eyes at her sarcasm but chose not to say anything. "Here, Aiden, come over here. Take out your wallet."

Aiden obediently withdrew said object from his jeans as if accustomed to the request, enduring a state of vertigo that was evident from the way he wavered back and forth as he stood in front of her. She placed several large bills in it then put it back in his hand, patting his shoulder to indicate that she was finished. He mumbled something incoherent, presumably expressing his gratitude.

"Peace out, douches."

"Hey, don't be a cunt, Ashley. Make sure Spencer gets home all right," Glen repeated, then led Aiden around the house to his car.

"Do you pay him to get trashed?" Spencer asked Ashley, seating herself in an adjacent chair.

"I don't pay him to get _drunk_. It's like a fucking allowance, or something. Christine gives me debit cards three and four so when I go to pick up some cash I have to make sure that dumbass can throw down on the groceries. And Grey Goose is a pretty expensive thing to waste. I mean, he could have just gone with the Country Club, but he must have been expecting something tonight."

"Don't you ever feel like that's contributing to his alcoholism?"

"Money doesn't make the alcoholic, alcohol does. If I didn't give him that he'd get his groupies to hook him up, and in the middle of the night when his bitches would be sleeping he'd drink his family's stuff and get himself in shit."

Spencer frowned and forced her mind to wander somewhere more pleasant.

"Thank you for playing me a song. If you started practicing, I bet you'd be perfect," she said, directing her vision towards Ashley. Her lips curled upwards for a moment but her eyes remained closed.

"You think I played that for you? You've got quite the ego, Carlin."

"Right, right, I'm just so full of myself. Correct me, Ashley, put me in my place. Who did you play it for?"

"Do you think I should get a snake? Like, a big one, and I could let it slither around out here and attack intruders."

"Sorry? Who did you say? I just really wish someone as modest and level-headed as you could teach me about proper humility."

Ashley stood up and leaned over Spencer, moving until their faces were inches apart and her eyes darted between her lips and the blue in her eyes. She could see her own reflection through the glassy texture of her pupils, and the color was sharp against the redness induced by the marijuana.

"What if I didn't play the song for you because I played it _against_ you?"

"What's the difference?"

Ashley had to mull this over, but Spencer didn't give her time to answer.

"I could help you practice if you like. I mean, I'm not much with music, but if you did it every time I came over then you'd have to start playing again."

Ashley began to kiss her, intense and slow, but when they broke away to breathe Spencer continued speaking.

"You could play songs around me, at me, before me, from me…"

"On top of you?"

"You'd have to learn how, first."

Beneath a bright moon this dialogue persisted, and across Los Angeles Aiden watched with tired eyes and a sore head as it disappeared behind the buildings on the strip. Glen and he had come to one of his favorite clubs, and it was second nature for him to forget his fatigue and ill memory for the sake of casual sex and an open bar in a place that even natural light could not reach.

"Do girls like beards?" Glen asked him as they sat down and ordered their first round.

"Dude, no," Aiden said, rolling his eyes. Although Ashley didn't act incredibly feminine, her consistent company and that of other girls' had given him an innate knowledge of twenty-first century charisma, and he was not accustomed to being friends with a normal male. His relationship with the rest of the basketball team was almost paternal, in which he saw in them an assortment of generic kids that were never involved in his external affairs and they saw in him an indispensable source of knowledge on sex and parties.

"I don't know, man. I think I look pretty rugged when I don't shave for a few days."

"Don't grow a beard, you'll look fucking stupid."

"Shit, all right. I wonder what's up your ass."

"Did Spencer see me all drunk earlier?"

"You? Drunk? As if you ever get drunk, you fuckin' pussy," Glen said. The question didn't seem particularly important to him. "Hey, those girls are checking us out. Let's go dance."

"Wait, I need to drink more."

"There's always time for that shit. Gotta go with the moment, you know."

"I can't dance yet, hold on," Aiden said. "Just a few more." He managed to get the bartender's attention and downed a shot of gin. Glen had already disappeared among the bodies. "One more," he said.

In this way, shot by shot, Aiden let the animalistic part of his brain control him. He fed off the alcohol until he was acting only on his sex drive and what had not yet faded of his will to survive.


End file.
